Transparency is a commonly used term today. From government to business to the social graph, "transparency" has become a part of our every day lexicon. There are some obvious and high profile examples of transparency becoming a press relations nightmare; sorry Michael Phelps but I needed a good example here. Phelps "bongisode" was a brand challenge. As a very visible, heroic figure, who's personal brand had been turned into a marketing platform, the image of Michael Phelps smoking pot clearly didn't have "brand truth" and the transparency of the Internet illuminated the conflicting imagery. In business this same type of transparency is shining a strong-and difficult to control-light on customer service. Regis McKenna wrote about the "Whole Product" back in the late 1980's. His thesis was that the entire customer experience, including customer service, would form the whole product experience and that in a digital world this would become even more important. As has often been the case, Regis's vision for the impact that digital technology would have on brand as a result of providing transparency to the full customer experience, would prove to be accurate.

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15 years after the web became a commercial platform, we are all still waiting for the Internet to become an advertising medium. Wait you say, the web is a huge advertising medium. Look at Google! Yes, the web has clearly generated a massive amount of marketing revenue. But its direct marketing revenue for the most part. Not advertising. The web has yet to fulfill it's promise as an advertising medium for multiple reasons.

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This is a post I did for our UBM TechWeb marketing site, Create Your Next Customer. Been getting some interesting calls and emails from the post so thought I would post it to UOM as well.

The irony of this era in marketing is that we have more tools, that connect us with our customers and prospects in more ways than ever, yielding more data than we’ve ever had, yet we still struggle to really understand them. The extraordinary power of digital media and the Internet has provided a host of new tools and platforms for reaching and engaging audiences and in turn generates a massive volume of data and metrics. I’m not sure however that we as marketers or business information and media providers are any better at understanding what our customers need based on all of this information. I’d actually argue that we are awash in so much data that it has made “listening” even harder.

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The end of 1999 was a wild time. It was the dawning of the 21st century. Equity markets were soaring. Media synergy fueled an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions and the Web appeared to be sweeping everything up in its wake. The Internet was proving to be as powerful as the predictions too. Pure play online start ups were popping up everywhere and valuations surpassed larger, profitable, more established media businesses. The concept that the Internet would be more efficient than "traditional media" was a significant valuation driver. Another was the promise of multiple forms of revenue. The "3 C's": Content, Community and Commerce, served as the foundation for hundreds of online start up business plans. In 18 months, from the middle of 1998 through the end of 1999, I had two acquaintances of mine from the media industry make over $125 million in online media IPO transactions. 1999 was a party indeed. Like all parties however the rager that started the decade came to an end. And the next morning wasn't pretty. Nor as much fun. In some respects the hangover continues...

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Ok so first let me geek out a bit. I'm writing this post at 35,000 feet above what I would guess is Kansas (don't they all look the same?) as I fly from Chicago to LA. While I hear endless commentary from other frequent travelers about how poor airline service is and the appalling aspect of charging for what was previously free services (tangent alert media industry...pay attention the concept of charging for previously free services is not your nightmare alone...far from it) the reality for me is I'm still geeking out on having wireless on flights across the country. It is a *huge* game changer and totally and completely negates the increasingly shitty experience of frequent travel. But, I digress. This is not the point of my post...Print. Yes print

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Updated on Saturday, August 15, 2009 by Tony Uphoff

Over the last 12 months the state of the economy and the impact of the recession have been topics in virtually every meeting I've been in. The discussions have ranged from detailed analysis by "leading" economists (one in particular at a meeting in March was thrilled when at the end of his 60 slide deck now predicting a decade long slide in the economy, I asked if he had predicted the recession 6 months ago) to debates on financial trends, to simply sharing the anxiety the recession has caused for all of us. In general the common thread in each of these conversations has been the attempt to gain a sense of context. "This is just like 1987 or 1991, or perhaps 2001". "This isn't a tech bubble like 2001, this is a credit bubble".

So is this economic downturn like the others? Are there lessons to be learned? As an early management mentor of mine used to say "the only accurate predictor of future behavior is past behavior". So yes, there are comparisons to be made and lessons to be learned. Based on previous cycles it's safe to assume that the economy will continue to change, and these changes will outpace our ability to forecast them. It's safe to assume that we will see an economic rebound and it will happen with more speed than we expect and with unique twists that we won't anticipate. What else can we learn from the behavior of past economic downturns? New innovations will be launched, creating new opportunities and new challenges for existing businesses. In each downturn and recovery, innovations emerge and with them a new calculus, that changes the business rules. Nowhere is this more true than in the media business.

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Without question the best dot com meeting of all time was the meeting we had in 2000 with Michael Jackson-yes that Michael Jackson-introducing him to the venture investors in our Internet start up Beliefnet. Jackson was looking to raise money for a theme park venture on his Neverland Ranch. One of our columnists was the Rabbi Schmuley Boteach who was a friend of Michael's and had facilitated Michael writing a column for us. Schmuley called us one day and asked if we would invite our venture investors to a meeting with Jackson and his people to discuss potential investments in his theme park venture.

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