I do what I do because I had a hunch that the whole media industry would change fundamentally. When I started to do a lot of thinking on my own (instead of reading the short-sighted industry press for instance) I stumbled upon more and more signs of fundamental change in all of society.

I saw that the search for meaning in our lives and the marketing industry is closely related. And that blogs changes the relations in the media industry. But every time I´ve lifted a new stone I´ve found the same patterns of change. It´s all about transparency and people. Everywhere!

And if you just extrapolate that a bit you see the future.

We´re all going to be relating cyborgs. Every sci-fi writer knows that. Maybe most haven´t really emphasized the relating part enough though.

I believe that what will REALLY matter in the future is psychological maturity - or how psychologically adaptive a person is. Nothing else. We will have connected computers that takes care of most of the everyday aspects of relating. Which will be what is left for us to do when we have automatized most production. Except food, which will be a sign of status to produce personally or within your closest social network.

The most transparent people will be the ones with highest status, when social status have outranked material status.  And yes, in the future we WILL know who sleeps with whom. Nurturing the kids to never develop fears of rejection and feelings of being un-loved, the major psychological drivers of our current society, will be top on the agenda within all of society thanks to the abundance of information.

The number one driving force in all the change that is about to come is the transformation of the monetary system. The hopefully not so short period of transformation from focus on debt and scarcity to creativity and abundance will be D Day in the history books The people of today that have experience of low consumption-levels, flexibility in social relations and where and how they provide for the basic needs will be the first of the new breed.

Some possibly contra-intuitive predictions:

It will NOT be a sign of status not to be transparent and exposed.
That´s only helpful when anonymous money is the number one source of power. When relations and the ability to create something remarkable is the number one source of power exposure comes with it.

It will NOT be a threat to integrity to be transparent - it will be the basis of true integrity. Having one behaviour at work and another when you think nobody is watching isn´t integrity and has never been.

It will NOT be a society where people lay around eating donuts all day instead of doing something productive.
The desire to contribute to the welfare of others are a built in feature of us being social animals. Frightened and stressed animals behave differently from healthy ones, though. The human potential to create is actually infinate - as every parent of normally healthy kids know. And let me tell you a secret - the meaning of life isn´t actually contributing to GNP or even the circulation of money. It´s OK to settle with the basic needs plus enjoying oneself or the company of others.

It´s all happening. Go see for yourself.

I was asked by Ulrika Ingemarsdotter what books hard working communication professional ought to read to grasp as much as possible about social media. Beeing a bookie-guy I really enjoyed the question and here comes my ten cents on the subject. When writing this post I realize that Amazon.com is really WORKING! Try searching for Cluetrain and you´ll see what I mean…

1. Cluetrain Manifesto. It´s THE book. I put it first in the list even though it´s not very practically oriented. It was originally published as a webpage. When it went a success they also published it on dead wood so we all can read it in the bath tub without risc of beeing electricuted. From four slightly different perspectives the authors explains what happens when the market conversations are back again after have been quite silent during the industrial age - and now on a much larger scale thanks to the Internet. I personally believe this book to be one of the most important books ever written about society and business. It´s not a very hands on book, but it will give you a deep understanding of WHY and WITH WHAT EFFECT social media are changing the business rules. The book came out 2001.

2. Groundswell. Two Forrester Research guys manages to mix both strategy and implementation in one book with lots of good case examples on how companies has had success using social media. If you want to look smart in front of your boss when holding a presentation about social media - rip the Social Technographics Ladder model from page 43 and EVERYONE in the room will intuitively place themselves and others somewhere on the scale and get the point. When I saw that (recently) I immediately understood why I haven´t managed to come across to a lot of audiences I´ve spoken to about social media. Brilliant!

3. Everything is Miscellaneous. OK, NOW we´re getting a bit philosophical. This is a book for strategists on a high level. If you´re not - the two books above will do. The book is written by David Weinberger who is one of the Cluetrain guys and is in my eyes the Public Opinion of the 21:st century. The main idea is that the way we organize information forms our way of thinking about the world. It used to be by putting knowledge on paper and that made us think in hierarchical ways about the world. The web now makes us organize our knowledge with links and tags instead. That makes us think in a much more flexible way about the world which in turns is a blast to most of the ways of living that we´ve created during civilazation as we know it. It´s pretty deep shit, really. But it´s also GREAT reading if you´re interested in what´s about to happen in media when SEARCHING for content beats WAITING for it (news papers, TV, Radio etc). When it´s all about context (it is), your social relations, your psychological make-up and the creativity people use when tagging information is more important than what newspaper you read, where you live or what income you have. Published 2008.

4. Netocracy. Most of us haven´t got the time to read Manuel Castell´s mega work. I suggest you instead read Alexander Bard´s and Jan Söderqvists book about how Internet changes the fundamental power structures in society. It´s about how well networked, creative and fast moving individuals and groups with amazing speed can have a large impact in business and politics. And how it works for you to copy. It won´t help you install a blog or get an account somewhere, but it WILL help you wanting to do it, especially in these days of looming financial crisis. From 2002.

This list wouldn´t be complete unless I added a few books NOT to read if you have little time and much to do. They´re all great books, by the way.

The Long Tail. If something is digital it can be produced, distributed and payed for in the web. That opens up HUGE markets. If only part of it is digital (the marketing or the payment) it opens up the market, but not to such a HUGE extent. So go digital, young man!

The Black Swan. Social Media and the Internet is unleashing the creativity of millions of people right now. That creates more competition for everyone. And more inspiration. There are two ways of beeing creative. Either you IMPROVE within the existing model of thought or you DISRUPT the existing model of thought. There´s more money in the latter. And more fun!

The Selfish Gene. The main question in a world where peoples attention is worth more than gold is what motivates people. Richard Dawkins reminds us that we´re first and foremost animals even if we can spell out the two words Post Modernism. The conclusion is that the Kabbhalists, Darwin, Maslow, Freud and the rest of the sex-food-shelter first guys have been right all along. What fascinates me is that it seems like capitalism has made enormous amounts of people to go beyond those motivations and get into self-actualization. Social Media and consumtion helps us construct our IDENTITIES and experience MEANING in our lives. Dawkin´s reminds us about the order of those motivations and helps you understand where science has actually brought us when it comes to what it means to be human. Not a bad piece of work, I have to say.

Enjoy your reading and please tell me why I´m right or wrong.

Per Robert Öhlin recently wrote an article named “What can we learn from Hollywood?” published in the Swedish marketing industry newspaper Dagens Media and re-published it on his blog. Unfortunately it´s in Swedish, but try putting it in Google Translate and you also add a lot of humour to the reading!

In the article he describes how archetypes makes a difference in whether people care och don´t about brands and why. From my point of view it is a brilliant executive brief-style version on Mark´s and Pearson´s über-smart book The Hero and the Outlaw and Joseph Campbells seminal The Hero with a thousand faces.

Per´s view point is from within the brand, answering questions about how brands can stay relevant in an ever more competitative consumer world. Per suggests managing the brand dramaturgy by starting in the core values and work oneself down from there. Myself, I´m more interested in how people use brands as props when creating their identity using self-stories. My firm belief is that true love happens when the brand archetypes meets the personal archetype conveyed by a certain audience. For example people deliberately or unconcius identifying themselves as Caregivers and a Caregiver brand.

But, as Per points out, story-telling is about conflict, so things really starts moving when an opposing archetype is introduced on the scene. Highly intuitive people tend to react strongly to highly sensing people, either wanting to be more like them (how many intellectuals doesn´t secretely dream about beeing a farmer?) or disdaining them. We all know about love/hate relationships where the opposing forces of push and pull are constantly present. It work´s the same whether it´s in a romantic relationship. Match.com knows this and hired the attraction expert Dr. Helen Fisher to create a personality test for the romantically disadvantaged. Opposites attracts, but have a hard time living together. Either you have great sex or you have great conversations. The third option is laying your hands on a psychologically mature person that are not identifying very much with their personality. (Hmmm…. A dating service for the spiritually advanced might actually be quite a good idea now a days!)

Back to the topic. I believe that peope seldom tell stories about brands. People tell stories about themselves AS BRANDS all the time, however. Nowadays hundred of millions of people are using their blogs, and other social media platforms as tools for telling their self-stories. Blogs are particularly interesting though, since they provide rich data on how people formulate their archetypical voice, how they change their personas over time and - the coolest thing of it all - how they use DIFFERENT brands as props depending on what persona thay are currently communicating. Most people use different personas at different times, depending on what they believe is proper and what they level of comfort they are feeling at the moment. Blogs are like an ocean of recorded human voices providing a never before seen opportunity to study patterns in how different psychographic segments (archetypes, myers-briggs, enneagram, temperaments etc) are ACTUALLY using brands as props. But also what other stuff they take an interest in such as where they go for news and information, what celebrities and/or authorities they quote etc.

The marketing world is about to see a fundamental change in how brands and audiences can be managed thanks to the second thesis in the Cluetrain Manifesto - Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors. How we THINK is more defining of how we live than how old we are or where our house is located. How we think is what psychographics is all about.

Archetypes helps us think up stories about ourselves and the world around us. Different psychographic segments identify themselves with different archetypes and create dramaturgical stories using conflicting archetypes found in products, celebrities or brands. And that is all to be discovered on a grand scale thanks to the fact that the web is enabling conversations and ways of self-expressions that were “simply not possible in the era of mass media” to quote the Cluetrain Manifesto, the most interesting book for marketers since Walter Lippman´s Public Opinion.