Technology

(WBZ) Join host Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research and some of the leading thinkers in digital media who reveal their insights and predictions into how changes in people's behavior are rewiring the media world. In this series, local leaders share their perspectives on how technology has transformed the media landscape, how consumers are leading the charge with social media, and what the media world should do to stay on top.

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The Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX: "my-techs") is the region's premier industry and professional organization dedicated to support and promote technology and innovation in New England. MITX focuses at the intersection of technology, marketing and digital media and its community is comprised of individual and companies that work in the digital industry.

Watch individual segments of Larry's interview below:

What do people need to know about PR in technology?
What's different today from the boom years of the 90's?
What are ideas for marketers engaging people in the social web?
Who owns a brand?
How is it possible to be a good leader in this era?
Who will be the best leaders of the next generation?
How does Boston compare to other parts of the world?

Josh: Hi I'm Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research. We're here with Larry Weber; author and the founder of W2Group, a holding company of next generation marketing services and chairman of MITX. I want to start with this, you've been around this technology business for a long time and I think everybody would agree you're the consummate PR guy. Tell me; give us the insider view of public relations. What is the one thing that people need to know in technology about PR that they just don't understand?

Larry Weber: I think the biggest thing that people don't understand is that it really is more like a relationship you have with a lawyer or an accountant, it's a deep professional service relationship. It's not just an adlib marketing thing. You've got to get deep into an understanding of the technology you need to know how to present it and position it. And I think PR is really about influencing opinion with content not influencing opinion with volume. So I think you have to be able to position companies differently, smartly, and you have to understand how to interact with third parties like Forrester, Gardner, IDC, Yankee. Because people want to validate technology and they want to make sure they're doing it right. It's been interesting to watch over the last 25 years though because more recently now that we're moving now into a social media sort of world PR has got to change and adopt, that there is a lot of word of mouth and a lot of bloggers and new media types that are getting involved in validating as well. PR has got to adapt to that as well. It's been fun though, it's been interesting to watch companies start with very few people and grow into the largest software companies in the world. Or hardware companies or entertainment device companies, and also ones that I thought would do well fail. But there is a whole new crop moving into 2007 of companies that I think are going to be fascinating to watch as technology goes more and more under the hood and we start living in a very emotive world of digital reality.

Josh: Well I mean you've lived through the boom years of the 90's you saw the bust happen, and now the new resurgence of energy around technology. What's different this time around? What is it that categorizes this era vs. what we've had before?

Larry: I think first of all we've had time to live with the internet a little more and get more comfortable with it. Also we have a generation of people or users that are focused on experience and they want the best experience. They're not just there to transact things. I think we're also moving into a time where there is a constant need for social interfaces on digital platforms and it's less about transactional interfaces. And that's what it was the first time. The idea of belonging to communities which everybody thought was kind of "Kumbaya"ish in the 90's is actually becoming true. And I think a year or 2 from now most adults will belong to maybe 10-12 primary communities online that are really important to them whether they be social or health related, or professionally related. So I think that's what changing quite a bit and I think the only dangerous thing I see and it's not a bubble this time; the only dangerous thing I see is the monetization models are only dealing with advertising. So every time we see a new company we say "how are you going to make money?" "oh, advertising is going to support everything" and I don't think that is going to be true.

Josh: Now your new book that is coming out is actually about the Social Web. Can you let us in a little bit on the main ideas for marketers as they engage people in the social web?

Larry: Just for some context Josh, I believe we're sort of in 4.0, I know that's trendy probably to say.

Josh: Your 1.0 beyond everybody else here, that's pretty good.

Larry: I think one was site building, two was sort of this browser period, three is the social period, which I'll talk about how marketers have to look at it, and next is going to be the motive web, which is fully rich media, which you know very well, and broadband access. So that's going to make things very emotive; you can laugh, cry, sell, etc. But the social web and marketers What I'm trying to do is explain in the book, that if you look at this phenomena of YouTube and MySpace and FaceBook and LinkedIn, and Daily Candy even or these that it's not those becoming a being movie cause they might at any time, become a being movie, but it's the lesson on how to communicate in a social context in a digital universe and platform. It is going to be important for business to understand on how to market. Example would be IBM's site, which actually is a great site, inviting you in, letting you navigate to your specific interest, watch a show, download a Podcast, give your opinions on things. So it's learning the more social nature of professional life that is going to come in the next few years. It's already happening now, so it just happened to come first with the younger generation that wanted to be more social online. And now it's not even going to be online because the internet is going to be the closest thing to real life that we have. And that's what marketers need to understand. The second thing that marketers need to understand is that Madison Ave brainwashed us for 10 years to believe that the internet was channels, so you had newspapers, television, radio, and internet. And that is just not true anymore. The internet ate radio maybe 5, 6 years ago. It's eating television as we speak. We have half the print that we had 5 years ago and there will be no newspaper over 1,000,000 circulation in 5 years. There will be no nightly news. So I don't know what Katie Couric was so excited about, except that she gets to get a 15 million dollar check and get to sleep late. Which is pretty cool. But so I mean the whole mix of media and entertainment that is changing is going to change the way we market, and that's why we see people experimenting with everything, building their own social networks, Podcasts, this word of mouth, this kind of platform.

Josh: But when you talk to marketers, we've been talking about this throughout this whole series, that media companies are about "we talk, you listen". And frankly marketers and PR people are also used to "this is our message, carry our message." There doesn't tend to be a lot of room in people's strategies for listening.

Larry: They're going to have to because and they're going to be forced to listen because branding in this generation has a very simple definition. Branding is the dialog you have between your customers. The stronger the dialog, the stronger your brand will be.

Josh: Now this is a question I've asked everyone: Now, who owns this brand? Is the brand owned by the company? Does Nike own the brand? Or do the users of that product or that service actually define the brand?

Larry: The greatest brands are owned by the complete community of constituents so not just the purveyors of the brand who are the company, sort of speak but anybody that touches that brand, whether that be customers, potential customers, legislators, third party analysts, are all part of the branding experience. And what's happening now as we move into this new phase of digital communications, is that brands are not static anymore. Brands are verbs, not nouns. So if you don't believe that they are a verb, you are going to be in a lot of trouble

Josh: In your most recent published book, you titled that Provocateur and you've talked a bit about leadership and how certain types of companies have the kind of leaders they need. Other top-down leaders really don't do what they need to do. Can you tell us a little bit about leadership and how it's possible to be a good leader in this era of web 4.0 or whatever you want to call it?

Larry: My belief is that because of the first internet, with the quote "bubble bursting" we reverted to leaders that were very good operators. So all of a sudden we have people that are very good at cutting expenses and making sure things are controlled properlyand that is the worst type of leader to have in the innovation economy. We need to go back to the leaders like Steve Jobs that understand that everything is about the user experience or the customer experience. It's about vision, and it's about innovation. It's about constantly trying things, it's about letting people work from the bottom-up, not top-down, and those are the great leadership techniques that are going to be able to take over. And I see it even happening with people in their 40's now, taking over for companies that I think are far more innovative in understanding of sharing, common visions of being creative and being thoughtful and innovative about things. So I have thought about leadership for most of my career and the better leadership usually wins over the better technology, which is really too bad. But you know, it's really an understanding that the customer really comes first and what their experience is and that's what a great leader is in this day in age.

Josh: Can you give us some specific examples? I mean you work with man companies. Who really are going to be some of the best leaders of the next generation?

Larry: I really like Reed Hoffman who started LinkedIn, and also some of the early founders of PayPal, I think he really gets the new business models and is openly letting the company sort of form themselves and work through the process of sort of first generation Social Networks and social marketing. So I respect Reed and what he's been accomplishing. I still respect Steve Jobs immensely; I think what he's been able to do, to basically become the new Sony without Sony knowing it for a number of years, I think it's fascinating. He still seems to have a religious following, with every product they come out with and even yesterday the Wall St. Journal technology section was who will challenge iPod and who will challenge Apple. So I like them. I really like some of the new what I call the "Democratization of content companies" like RedHat. I think Mathew Szulik is doing a phenomenal job at taking on the last generation of software like Microsoft and really doing it in a way that distributive development is really a way of the future and software service is a way of the future. And also companies like RedHat, companies like Google, companies like EBay are also putting moral purpose as part of their overall platform and leadership and I think that's really cool to really touch people in more ethical and more moral ways that you don't have to overspend for technology. That there is a lot of ways to get things done; Even better without overspending things.

Josh: So I want to get into the last question here, which in this case I want to get relentlessly local. You've worked with entrepreneurs all over the country, and as founder of MITX, you're certainly familiar with Boston. How do we really compare here in Boston to what's happening in San Francisco or New York, or other parts of the world?

Larry: I get that a lot, and I remember taking a lot of slings and arrows in the 90's. When I said it was a good thing digital equipment is having a lot of problems. And the reason was that I saw all these great engineers now having to scatter throughout 128/495 region. I think we've always been a little defensive. But I think that's the wrong way to be. I think Boston is probably the strongest R&D infrastructure Economy there is in the world. I think we come up with the best core ideas around the future of technology, the future uses of technology,. more than the Valley who is looking more from the user experience or the external point of view. Web-based branded companies I think the city to watch is actually not the valley anymore or Tech Austin or Virginia; I actually think its Los Angeles. I think Los Angeles is going to be one of the hottest innovative cities in the world. Because of the combination as technology goes under the hood and people are more and more experienced entertainment. Branded experiences like an E-Harmorny which is based out there. That's a city that is going to be watched. And I think a marriage between Boston and in LA could be really cool because there's the media and entertainment, and even New York. And we have the infrastructure technologies like Brightcove and Mayven as an example. And I'm excited about that and then marrying it with some of the external interfaces and media and entertainment I think is going to be interesting to watch. But I'm bullish about the Boston economy about innovation, about the future of the web here.

Josh: Ok, thanks very much Larry. I'm Josh Bernoff.

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