Our next event:
12/3/2007: Dr. David Weinberger on “Embrace the Digital Disorder”
about the Mobium new paradigm series


Take a look at past events:
7/10/2007: Andrew Keen on “Overcoming Amateur Hour on Web 2.0”
12/1/2006: Rick Mathieson on “The Evolution of Brand: Will cell phones and techno-marketing evolve business or take it backwards?”
6/23/2006: Dr. Clotaire Rapaille on “Culture Codes: Why People Around the World Buy as They Do”
11/10/2005: Bob Lamons on “Case Studies that Make the Case for B2B Branding”
9/8/2005: Karen Post on “Brain Tattoos: Creating Unique B-to-B Brands that Stick”
11/4/2004: John Winsor on “Brand Stories: 9 Steps to Creating Customer Dialogue Through the Power of Storytelling”
6/24/2004: Douglas Atkin on “The Culting of Brands: Six Steps to Cultivating Fanatical Customer Loyalty”
10/1/2003: Professor Don Schultz on “Brand Babble”
6/25/2003: Fred Newell on “Saving CRM: Eight Steps to Reviving Customer Relationship Management by Empowering Customers”
4/22/2003: Richard Laermer on “The Free Ride is Over: Seven Trends That Signal the End of Convention for Business Marketers”
1/14/2003: Professor Don Schultz on “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us: The Problem With Business Marketing Is with the Marketers”
11/1/2002: Al and Laura Ries on “Seven Steps To Building a Business Brand in a Scary New World”
7/25/2002: Emanuel Rosen on “Nine Ways To Build Buzz”
 

 


Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, on how business marketers can overcome the amateurism of Web 2.0 and build credibility.

In the latest examination of how communication is changing, Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, spoke to a packed house at the Mobium New Paradigm Breakfast, encouraging hostility and insulting Web 2.0, PowerPoint and YouTube whenever and however he could.

Expecting a pelting from a contentious b2b marketing audience, many of whom are experimenting with Web 2.0 technology and social networks, Keen lamented how the free-for-all that is Web 2.0 destroys the credibility of professional researchers, writers and sources—and muddies the waters for b2b marketers.

“Digital Narcissism”, as Keen terms it, yields so much online content that it is becoming harder to discern fact from opinion-presented-as-fact from unchecked, unverified bullshit in this “explosion of worthless self expression”. This has become a survival of the fittest for even the most sinewy of savvy marketers.

And when printed sources give way to the onslaught of demand for free, amateur online content, Keen contends, not only will b2b marketers who function as talented experts and opinion leaders in their industries suffer, but their main source of traditional media placement suffers, as well. Until eventually marketers’ lines of credible, professional communications with their audience disappear altogether.

Web 2.0, Keen says, “‘fetishizes’ the idea that media should be free from advertising.” And this, he foretells, does not bode well for b2b marketers.

Keen ends his book, The Cult of the Amateur, on a positive note, but ended his presentation with a premonition for b2b marketers, urging that we as a community take responsibility for Web 2.0. While it is created and driven in part by b2b marketers, he warns, it is fast headed toward catastrophe. In Keen’s opinion, our well-constructed and thoroughly planned messages are, in the vast wasteland that is Web 2.0, in grave danger of becoming as irrelevant and forgotten as a bad home video posted by an anonymous user on YouTube.

Stay tuned.

See for yourself

Watch it on mobium.tv

“Overcoming Amateur Hour on Web 2.0” is the latest in Mobium’s New Paradigm Series—exploring the revolutionary changes that are altering business-to-business communications, and one of the BIGfrontier seminars.

Back to top