Tom Purves – Product Management, Fintech & AI

From: Roger Martin
Reply-To: alumniatrotman.utoronto.ca
To: thomas.purvesatgmail.com
Subject: Reminder: please give us your feedback this week on Rotman Magazine

Question 7: In your view, how could we improve the magazine?

I’m barely aware of it (even though i would like to be). I remember seeing the last issue, but if you asked me I couldn’t recall any of the articles or sections (thus many of these survey questions carry little meaning for me).

Maybe it’s just me, but in my case, the magazine doesn’t have enough frequency or currency to even get anywhere near my daily mental attention space or “consideration set” as they’d say in marketing class, when it comes to business knowledge. I get most of my leading edge business knowledge online these days through the blogosphere and rss feeds as opposed to on dead trees.

Certainly, there is a role for the glossy dead tree version but i think the magazine needs to get with the times and have a vastly improved online strategy. Instead of awkward/static pdfs, the magazine/the school needs to have a blog, it should allow comments, it should be a forum, it should enable conversations about issues and between alumni, alumni and faculty and students etc. I think it could be doing vastly more to connect the school with the community and professional world. But it’s failing at that. A lot of great content stranded in a stack of glossy dead trees that too few of us remember to pay any attention to.

Imagine the knowledge, the connections and the brand equity you could build if you just opened up all of the rich content and great minds inside that school to wider discourse on a global scale. And what an amazing built-in audience/community you have to draw from. Rotman alumni are everywhere and no doubt many would have leading experience or insights to offer on nearly any subject covered in the magazine.

If done right, a properly interactive Web strategy would benefit

Your audience
1. Enhanced access to content they might otherwise have missed
2. Access to a greater depth of information on any topic that could be possible in the print edition
3. Networking opportunities and abilities to discover interact with, connect with experts/alumni/members of the community

For the school
1. through more regular interaction, build a deeper sense of attachment to the school (think how this will help in fund-raising)
2. Through more richly developed ideas and a wider audience, enhance the brand of the school
3. Through greater interest, drive more copies of the print version

The tools are out there, he would not be so hard to set up. And the best part is, your community will generate the bulk of the value-added content for you.

anyway, this is what I do these days, take these comments for what you will. If you’d like to, call me. For my alma mater I’d gladly donate what expertise I can offer.

[link] the Rotman School of Management

A quick post to say that I am getting a lot of encouragement on the idea for BusinessCamp/StartupCamp (or whatever we ultimately call it). Rick Segal, who’s already off on a global doublefisted version of his own with Shel Israel, has offered his support and so has the innovationcommons. In fact the innovationcommons is (it’s what 2 weeks old now?) is developing and at an impressive rate. David Crow has been doing some heroic work in terms of pulling a complete business and finacial plan for this new foundations and facility. I met up with David and he offered some great suggestions on the format or how to weave together elements of a collaborative barcampish un-conference with a more traditional business conference format. He’s also suggested making Business camp the launch event for the innovationcommons which I think would be fantastic – if we can get the funding and facilities together in time

Tentatively, we’re looking at a two day event, sometime in the fall. A combination of live demos and learning-oriented seminars/panels potentially with all attendees (or attending firms) expected to contribute to one or the other. Look for more details to start coalescing once we can get a dedicated page and a wiki together. And if you have ideas or would like to help out with organizing, please let me know!

Tara Hunt Presenting Pinko Marketing at Mesh06

Say what you will of the outcomes of various communist revolutions, at least they had great marketing.

In some distant past lives as a designer, I’ll admit too that I have been drawn to these same motifs as well, the bold lines, sharp colors and explosive iconography can make for some remarkable graphic design. And maybe with the right historical sensitivity and/or a firm grip on the ironyometer, you can pull this off. But I don’t think you can pull it off whilst earnestly [gasp] citing Marx at length, as Tara Hunt (Miss rogue) does in her first post for Pinko marketing. That reference was since (sortof) retracted, but the imagery remains. Sure, she looked kinda sharp up there, but simultaneously there were a lot of us bums squirming slightly awkwardly in our seats.

And here is the real irony. Truth be told, social media != communism as it has ever been practiced. Social media is all about subverting and breaking down inefficiencies where they occur in centralized, top-down organization. And yet we all know how communism turned out. If anything, the unfettered empowerment individual voice, the ability of the community (read: market) to organically and meritocratically select for the best ideas and have them win out in the end – starts to sound a lot like, er, serious right-wing stuff. Libertarian Marketing anyone?

As the dust settles, what’s been the reaction to Tara’s Mesh performance throughout the local blogodome?

Joey explodes. Calling Pinko a cool idea with a bad name he starts off, rather entertainly, by relating Pinko to an axis of evil (and not the one you’re thinking of). I couldn’t agree more. It was Joey’s post that inspired this one, and look, we almost have the same picture.

Jevon yawns. If we can distil Pinko to saying it’s all about using social media to enhance communication building trust, credibility and wisdom within the crowd; then my friend Jevon has been ahead of that curve for a long time.

Others loved Tara’s keynote. See, for instance the comments here on this blogpost. Calling her “the diva of web2.0”. Now there’s a moniker.

No one I’ve seen so far is criticizing Tara’s actual ideas (she’s built her theory on sound foundations after all) aside from the quibble that she tends towards a slightly false absolutism. Clearly, though it is a good one, marketing is not the only application for social technology, nor is social marketing the only answer for selling goods in the future. etc.

Now Tara herself is a charming woman should you have the chance to meet her. So through the trials of self-inflicted controversy, does Tara Hunt deserve our well considered sympathy or antipathy?

Well consider this: By adopting such divisive and discomfiting branding (and it’s all a meta-controversy no less with almost no connection to the validity of the underlying ideas) Tara is generating a high level of attention on her, her ideas and somewhere down the line her employer Riya. Now how is that for a cunning marketing plan?

[edited 05/22/06]