Algorithms/Data vs. Ana...

Quick, what’s the second most traded commodity in the world, after oil? Sorry, no: it’s not coffee . In fact, while hard data is scant, it may well be — of all things — carbon. No, really. According to the World Bank (PDF) , the global carbon market was worth a whopping 1.42 Facebooks US$142 billion in 2010. Mind you, it’s not like container ships weighed down to the gills with graphite are crossing and recrossing the Pacific every week. What we’re actually talking about here is the trade in carbon offsets , ie, the absence of carbon. Very Zen, no? Techies should be comfortable with this notion; I seem to recall spending less time studying electrons than I did “holes,” ie their absence, while acquiring my EE degree… Anyway, where there’s a $twelve-figures market, there are startups fighting for a share. In particular, there’s a battle on to see who will be the primary aggregator of carbon-market data. On one side, dominating the market, I give you the Goliaths Point Carbon , a tentacle of the Thomson Reuters kraken, providing “independent news, analysis and consulting services for European and global power, gas and carbon markets,” and Bloomberg New Energy Finance , doing much the same. On the other, I give you plucky little David eCO2Market , a Paris-based startup with an algorithmic sling. Point Carbon and BNEF crank out tomes and tomes of research analysis and offer subscription-based information tools. eCO2Market dispenses with weighty reports, and disintermediates analysts and researchers. Instead it tries to build up the biggest, most thorough, and most up-to-date database of carbon-market information, and then gives its users algorithmic tools to search, slice, dice, and organize that data themselves. The more users pay, the better the tools. (They have a free tier, too, if you’re a data geek who wants to play with what they’ve got.) “It’s our job to take this incredibly convoluted carbon area and put it into a nice little package for investors, environmentalists, everyone, and make it as easy as possible to find projects and their participants, buy credits, or make an investment,” says Chris Draper of eCO2Market. For instance, solar-power company ToughStuff uses eCO2Market’s data to find early-stage solar projects who might be ideal ToughStuff customers. It’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll thrive. The carbon market is in something of a fraught state right now: aside from the embarrassing theft of millions of dollars worth of carbon credits by hackers a year ago, what the World Bank delicately refers to as “regulatory uncertainty” — ie the stalled attempts to cement a successor to the Kyoto Protocol — means that the near-term future is at best uncertain. On the other hand, this year should see the launch of the Western Climate Initiative , a cap-and-trade system involving California, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec; and in the long run, though, cap-and-trade carbon markets are probably a growth bet. Either way, eCO2Market is an interesting example of a small startup disrupting an information market by replacing human-written research and analysis with big-data aggregation, algorithms, and visualization. The optimal solution probably features both…but it says here the scale will tip further towards the latter with every passing year. Image : Global bubble map of carbon projects, from eCO2Market .

Cup of Joe: Changing Cu...

Last week I talked about how marketers should leverage culture to promote brands. Today I would like to talk about why we also can (and should) change culture. As I watched the video above I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Is marketing changing culture? Or is culture changing marketing?” Or in other words, are these ads changing our perception of beauty or is our perception of beauty changing the ads? I still don’t have the answer, but maybe it;s a little bit of both. In the end it doesn’t really matter, the bottom line is that the concept of “ideal beauty” has been around for a very long time. However, that doesn’t mean that it has to continue, and as marketers we have a unique ability to make a difference. Because as marketers we, in part, define culture. How To Change Culture With Marketing Develop Icons – Cultures love a good icon. For example take a look at Donald Duck in Germany, they love him. A strong icon can be a powerful force with in a culture. And who creates icons? Marketers do, that’s who! If we want to change our culture’s obsession with ideal body types we need to work to develop more icons that embody realistic and diverse forms of beauty. Change The Narrative – Maybe with the help of some of our new icons we can start telling some new stories. How about a story about a fully figured woman that men fight over. Or perhaps a movie about a funny young guy in a wheelchair that hordes of women lust after ( wink ). Stories shape our collective conscience and define the way we view the world. They also help define our own personal narrative, which gives us courage to be different and try new things. Make A Profit – Remember that marketing is still all about generating wealth. With out wealth we can’t elevate icons or tell new stories. So we need to use the power of marketing to create consumer demands that redefine cultural norms. We need to start building brands that target individuals that deviate from the prevailing cultural narrative. We need fashion brands that market directly to consumers with wrinkles and body weight. We need to grow these brand’s revenue streams and make wrinkles profitable. Quit Being Lazy – As I watched the video above I couldn’t help but think how unimaginative and uncreative the ads pictured were. Smart marketing is never easy. To redefine culture we have to be creative and try many different things and be willing to fail. Sometimes, it’s hard selling failure to our clients, which is why we need to demand and expect more courage from the companies and brands we work with. Most of you that work with large brands know that they are run by good people that want to do the right thing, they just often times lack the needed courage to do what needs to be done. In the 21st century marketers are one of the most influential elements on our culture. We have the power to redefine ideas and conscientiousness and it’s our job to wield that power responsibly. This does not mean simply abstaining from the types of ads in the video, it also means taking an active role in the development of new trends that shape our collective identity. If we can effectively do that, we can use marketing to make the world a better place while generating wealth. And, to me that sounds beautiful.

I Use Wikipedia More Th...

I just donated $40 to Wikipedia, because I promised myself I would every time I poked fun at its holiday donation drive and then just never got around to it. Did you know that you could actually donate during the off-season (Via the covert  “Donate to Wikipedia” link at the far left of each individual entry page)? I didn’t, before I asked Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales whether it was possible to donate in the off-season. Spoiler alert, it is. My 40 bucks got me, in addition to the very sweet ‘Thank You’ letter below, the satisfaction of paying duly for something I use all the freakin’ time. Dear Alexia, You are amazing, thank you so much for donating to the Wikimedia Foundation! This is how we pay our bills — it’s people like you, giving five dollars, twenty dollars, a hundred dollars. My favourite donation last year was five pounds from a little girl in England, who had persuaded her parents to let her donate her allowance. It’s people like you, joining with that girl, who make it possible for Wikipedia to continue providing free, easy access to unbiased information, for everyone around the world. For everyone who helps pay for it, and for those who can’t afford to help. Thank you so much. I know it’s easy to ignore our appeals, and I’m glad that you didn’t. From me, and from the tens of thousands of volunteers who write Wikipedia: thank you for helping us make the world a better place. We will use your money carefully, and I thank you for your trust in us. Thanks, Sue Gardner Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director This year the Wikimedia Foundation raised $20 million during its high gear donation drive, to cover a total budget of $28.3 million — the deficit is made up in grants and off-season donations. Money raised is spent on things like servers, bandwidth, maintenance and staff. Here are the financials if you want to dig deeper. During the online encyclopedia’s blackout protest of SOPA , many off us felt the pang of “You don’t know what you’ve got until its gone” when we wanted to know something about, let’s say, Exponential Growth and that info wasn’t readily available. Google would be a bunch of spam if not for Wikipedia. I personally use Wikipedia more than I use makeup, multiple times a day. And I spend a good amount of money on makeup, AT LEAST $40 on a mascara/lippy combo. What do you use Wikipedia more than? Do the math …

Heineken: The Valentine...

Backing up from the last amazing brand film called “The Date”, Heineken have launched “The Serenade”. A cool Facebook app designed to help you ask people out on a date this Valentines Day, via a personalised “Serenade” video. It’s available in something like 20 languages, so just about anyone in the world can participate, a Related Digital Buzz Posts: The World’s First Animated Tattoo Heineken: Guerrilla Marketing Event In Italy Heineken Star Player: Live Football Gaming App

Jaja: A Pressure Sensit...

“Who Wants A Stylus?” - Steve Jobs, MacWorld 2007 As it turns out, plenty of people do. Not for navigating around the user interface, mind you — Steve (et al.) was absolutely right about that. But for the artists of the world looking to use the iPhone or iPad as their newfangled portable glass canvas, the stylus wins over the finger any day. And yet, the myriad iPad styluses floating about generally lack something that artists have come to expect of their digital pens: pressure sensitivity. Dubbing itself “the world’s first pressure sensitive stylus for iPad”, a successfully Kickstarted project called “jaja” looks to change that. And for that last bit of bonus flare: they’re trying to do it all without using WiFi or Bluetooth for wireless connectivity. So how does it communicate with the iPad? Sound . As you probably know, the world is just full of sounds that we can’t hear. Generally speaking, the human ear can hear sounds between 20 and 20,000 Hz. According to the guys behind jaja, the iPad’s mic can pick up frequencies well beyond that, giving them a bit of space on the high-end to pass signals as sound without driving everyone around you crazy. (But what about the dogs? Won’t someone think of the dogs?!) In addition to pressure sensitivity, the jaja will also have two built-in buttons meant to be used as hotkeys (for switching brushes, for example, or one-click undo/redo functionality.) Of course, any iPad app you’re hoping to use this with (beyond the basic, non-pressure-sensitive stylus functionality) will need to pack support for jaja’s in-progress SDK. Your favorite drawing apps probably aren’t currently using the microphone for anything right now, much less for parsing out high-pitched whining. One thing I’m left curious about: what about ambient sound? Take airplanes, for example. Without reliance on WiFi/Bluetooth, it’s noted that the jaja can be used safely on a plane. But plane engines generate an absurd amount of sound — much of that in the higher ranges. Might that cause interference? Whatever the case, the jaja is well past its original $25,000 goal on Kickstarter , so the odds of it making it to the real world are pretty solid. $40 gets you one of the first 500 jajas, 471 of which have already been snatched up.