Information rich and attention poor

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”

Herbert Simon
Quoted by Hal Varian in McKinsey Quarterly

A note on "branded" email

In Spring 2008 my classmates Alexandra Levich, Jenny Xu and Thang Troung Minh and I carried out an independent study on social networks. The study was supervised by Professor Rashi Glazer, our marketing professor at the Haas School of Business.

The goal of our study was to identify and validate the value proposition of online social networking. Our overarching question was What is the social networks' value proposition and how is it perceived by consumers?. Apart from the explicit, several focus groups unveiled interesting implicit behaviors of online social network users.

the explicit and the implicit

One of these behaviors consisted in that a given user employed facebook.com's messaging system to communicate with the same recipient he has just emailed one minute ago. This modality of "branded" email struck us. Beyond pure use, and despite a clunkier usability than regular email, there seemed to be a lot of hidden meaning.

From an elements-of-communication perspective, it seems that context plays an important role. Facebook, as the context in which this communication happens, has managed to create a new interaction space with its own rules.

In its form of "branded" messaging, the content of a facebook message can potentially be the same as in a traditional email. The channel itself, although clunkier, is technically similar to that of email. Nevertheless a facebook message serves different purposes, and can have different recipients than those of conventional email. Your friends tell you certain things over facebook and other things over email. People who would not email you, contact you via facebook messages. Maybe it is perceived as less intrusive?. Regarding time, my view is that facebook messaging is also perceived as more asynchronous, i.e. less aggressive, than email.

From a marketing point of view this case constitutes a great example of differentiation. Differentiation enabled by the facebook brand and the context it creates, but driven by user behavior. Fascinating.

Inovalatino. Innovation "en español"

I am currently collaborating with inovalatino, a Spanish-speaking blog on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology. The blog brings together the perspectives of a core group of MBA students (MIT and Haas) from Mexico and Spain. Our idea is to promote innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit amongst Spanish-speakers and specifically in our communities of origin, Latin America and Spain.


If you hablas español and you want to participate, let me know. We would love to have you on board.

Same stones. Different cathedrals

The transition from Renaissance to the Baroque period was a time of crisis. Art went through a deep transformation, let alone spirituality and culture in general. Mannerism, one step beyond Renaissance but not Baroque yet, questioned the function of the main ingredients of architecture. For example, columns and arches, traditionally utilized to support other elements, were used as mere decorative components in the grand scheme of a facade. Nevertheless architects used the same old stones, combined differently to produce a completely innovative result.

Nothing new under the sun. Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google and my Technology Strategy professor, in an interview for McKinsey Quarterly refers to “combinatorial innovation”. Nowadays innovators can combine different and unlimited components made of bits - Internet, software, etc - to achieve stunning results. In his opinion this flexible innovation will keep on providing significant productivity gains in the coming years.

Hal Varian, Professor at Haas and Google's Chief Economist

Interestingly, in the interview he also points at what he considers the future of education. In a world with unlimited information the most valuable skills will be those related with extracting value from data. Understanding information, drawing conclusions and being able to present them in a compelling way so knowledge can be successfully applied.

Communications in the Time of Crisis

As part of their communication strategy in the auto bail out controversy, General Motors has a website - GM Facts and Fiction - addressing facts and myths about the company.


The home page starts laying out plain facts: "General Motors is the best-selling automaker in the U.S., "M’s brands [...] are ranked above industry average as measured by 2008 J.D. Power Initial Quality", etc.

Then, another section of the site follows the scheme myth - fact. Myths about GM are grouped into 5 categories and for each of them there is a response, backed up with data ("GM doesn’t make cars that people want to buy", "General Motors has far too many people working for it","GM designs are uninspiring", etc.). The site even allows visitors to submit myths they might have heard.

It is not available anymore but some weeks ago there were messages addressed to different audiences. I might not remember it perfectly but I think there were specific sections with answers for auto workers, consumers and suppliers. I am a big fan of profiling users in order to increase relevance in the message, so i do not understand why this technique disappeared from the site.

To complete the picture, there are FAQs, latest news and general information on the auto industry.

There are twenty seven (27!) myths. Obviously they are all highly detrimental. Given that the firm refutes them, it would be interesting to know what triggers such amount of bad perception amongst the general public. My point is, what is the role that this fact - widespread negative consumer perception- plays in GM having to recur to a bail out. Twenty seven (at least) false and extremely harmful beliefs have been lurking who knows for how long before the firm started giving facts to counter attack them...

Bus shelters come to life...

This weekend I have experienced Chicago's extreme temperatures. While waiting for the bus in Michigan Avenue I had the chance to take a close look at one of those marketing gimmicks that press and magazines inevitable write about - just like this article in the NYT -.


Inside the bus shelter, above Kraft's Stove Top stuffing poster, there was a set of lights supposed to provide heat to bus passengers while waiting for their ride to arrive. It didn't work that well although, as I said temperature was quite low...



Some call it experiential marketing, others categorize it within guerrilla marketing. Although there might be interesting implications regarding the user experience (for example, the fact that brand attributes might be projected out of their natural environment), for me these gimmicks are just that. Ways of obtaining free media coverage. It is a quite effective technique I must admit: it is an unexpected event, crafted around a story ... good raw material for journalists. Good ROI for the product manager. Good PR for the brand. Good PR for the agency.

The following picture is a previous summertime iteration made of artificial lawn. Also spotted in Chicago, in 2008. Who would have told me I will be blogging about it? :)

Words of wisdom coming from Chicago

"Gratefulness is the soil in which Joy thrives"

Seen in a billboard at the Salvation Army in Chicago

A good friend spotted this one. I must say I am grateful to her.
And, hey, this dot connects with Thanksgiving celebrations. Right on time.