Havas Media Lab

Samsung’s Instinct is selling just as fast the Razr before it. And we all know how that story ended: even the Razr couldn’t stop Motorola’s handset group from imploding. Lesson: the real challenge for mobile isn’t just making cool stuff - because the network operators can minimize the value of cool handsets in a hearbeat. The real challenge is making an entire value chain which provides an authentically, radically awesome set of services and a killer consumer experience .

Yahoo vs Microsoft - again (again). Consolidating an obsolete business model is probably only worth 3-5 years of rapidly diminishing returns. What’s the real plan for strategic renewal?

 The MediaGuardian 100. Why is media unable to grapple with a profound need for strategic reinvention? Check out the list and draw your own conclusions - mine is a noticeable lack of almost any kind of diversity. Imagine the finance, econ, or politics top 100: would it be as homogeneous as this?

Blogosphere thinks Guardian Media is the new Yahoo (ie, acquirer of what’s left of www 2.0). It’s not - the GMG guys are too smart to gobble up could-have-beens like Digg.

The ongoing death of “loyalty”, special airline frequent flyer edition. How did we used to think about the thoroughly industrial era idea of “loyalty” to a brand, product, or company? By..ummm…buying it.

Needless to say, that’s neither authentic, sustainable - nor economically meaningful. It’s just naked price competition by another name - and when we employ it, all we do is sell ourselves out at the end of the day.

That’s why reinventing “loyalty” is a huge opportunity for strategic innovation across industries today.

Everyone’s hypnotized by Apple. Absolutely right. Why? Because Apple has radical new DNA. It’s not organized according to industrial era principles - that’s why it’s able to stop playing the same old lame, tired, value-destructive industrial era games of strategy, and break yesterday’s rules instead.

You know the mobile value chain that’s kept consumers alienated, innovation stale, and handsets lame for the last decade? Apple is atomizing it in real time: that’s what the Apps Store really is.

Oorthodox strategy kills yet another industry: video games. Yes, publishers, marketing the life out of (insert licensed megabrand here) pt 99182838 is so not thinking strategically - it’s just a way to get locked into a marketing war. Thank you, Nintendo, for bringing fresh DNA to this long-suffering industry - just like Apple’s doing to mobile, media, and consumer electronics.

Here’s a related and kind of cool example of fresh DNA slowly taking shape in the games industry: Rock Band as a mechanism for connected consumers to engage with music once again (Guns n Roses, in this case). Now that’s almost fresh DNA - to maximize the gains from such a value chain, labels, artists, and managers have to think about making music itself radically open, remixable, liquid, etc…

Fund managers (really) can’t outperform the market. Lol - really? You don’t say.

What might be more interesting is to ask the same question of agencies, strategy consultancies, and advertising itself. Because the fact that the world’s top brand belongs to a company which doesn’t well, advertise, suggests strongly that advertising itself has little effect on corporate performance.

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Media markets are falling like dominoes - here’s the latest prediction: film and TV are on the verge of being cannibalized by digital media.

Why? What’s the deeper cause?

It’s not just a defection to digital media, which seems to have less attractive margins. Rather, the cause is the media indsutry’s acceptance of those simple economics: the ongoing refusal to engage with serious, meaningful business model and strategic innovation.Digital media isn’t inherently less profitable (hi, Google). It’s only less profitable if we apply yesterday’s business models - built for a vastly different set of resources and capabilities - to it. If we want to rediscover profitability, growth, and advantage, we cannot go on applying obsolete business models to next-generation assets.

There are many paths to business model reinvention. Here’s perhaps the most critical for media.

We’ve been discussing, over the last few weeks, the need to revitalize brands: to shift from talking to listening. Why is that important?

Because nearly every media market’s highest-value revenue stream is branded ads, and even those that don’t obey that logic depend critically, if indirectly, on brands.

The logic is simple. Connected consumers are rational. They will continue to defect to digital media: the value proposition is explosive, and their attention is allocated far more efficiently than being forcefed inert, linear media.

But unless media owners, advertisers, and, yes, agencies get together to engage in meaningful business model and strategic innovation, old business models - especially those dominated by brands - will continue to be “cannibalized” by this shift in consumer behaviour, because consumers are too busy talking to each other to pay much attention to industrial-era brands.

We’ve discussed - at length - the inevitable shift for brands from talking to listening. What continues to be surprising is just how reluctant media is to explore these new possibilities - and how media markets continue, one after another, to implode, failing to learn to the lessons of those that came before.

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