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Slide Notes

Crowdfunding Lessons From The CLASH
This deck and blog post on Curagami were inspired by the response to this share on G+: https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/ahv1LBC1vY3

& my love of a documentary about Joe Strummer's life called The Future Is Unwritten

Turns out the Clash and Joe Strummer knew about Internet marketing long before there was much of an Internet.

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London Calling Crowdfunding Lessons From The CLASH

Published on Nov 06, 2015

Crowdfunding may be the ultimate "in your face" DIY (Do It Yourself) disruption. Much like the CLASH's "punk ethos", so well described in The Future Is Unwritten the biopic documentary film about Joe Strummer, marketers must create content and community with authenticity and awesome, daring and original content.

PRESENTATION OUTLINE

London Calling

Crowdfunding Lessons From The Clash
Crowdfunding Lessons From The CLASH
This deck and blog post on Curagami were inspired by the response to this share on G+: https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/ahv1LBC1vY3

& my love of a documentary about Joe Strummer's life called The Future Is Unwritten

Turns out the Clash and Joe Strummer knew about Internet marketing long before there was much of an Internet.

5 Clash Crowdfunding Tips

  • DIY & Disrupt.
  • Campfires Rule (collaborate).
  • Tribe Up.
  • Authenticity trumps money.
  • Opposites (fast = slow & slow = fast)
This picture looks like its from The Future Is Unwritten the great biopic about the Clash's Joe Strummer. Strummer loved campfires on a metaphorical and real world level.

Post about the film:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-future-is-unwritten/

Film on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0017WI5W0/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_Cp5bub0X7W1S9

DIY & Disrupt

Crowdfunding Ultimate DIY Disruption
Much like The Clash crowdfunding is disruptive. In an area when "clean slate" brands can give even the most historical brands headaches disruption may be the most important marketing tactics.

This does not MEAN disruption or crowdfunding should be your only marketing tactic. Crowdfunding and disruption should be part of a diversified approach.

All eggs in any single basket is suicide these days. Better to hedge, test, disrupt and protect. "Disrupt and protect" don't feel like they should be in the same sentence? Welcome to Internet marketing.
Photo by Cau Napoli

Untitled Slide

This is my favorite quote from The Future Is Unwritten proving the Clash knew about the Internet before there was one :). M

Untitled Slide

Joe Strummer's last Christmas Card mailed only days before the holiday. Many would receive Joe's "campfire" Christmas greetings as they heard about his passing.

Much of The Future Is Unwritten takes place around a campfire. The film's process is as revolutionary and groundbreaking as its subject. Sitting around the fire we hear from Bono, Strummer's friend and band mates and other celebrities. The convention pays homage to Strummer at the same time as making would could have been a talking head gabfest interesting and engaging.

Campfires

Joe Loved Informal Collaboration of Campfires
Campfires are a fitting analogy for the web. The web's metaphorical campfire is the online community. If your website is emulating campfires in these ways:

* People are attracted to its warmth and authenticity.
* Openness prompts stories and more openness.
* Marketing with warmth, caring and authenticity creates more of the same in an ever faster loop.
* Stories, sharing and listening are Sine qua non (an essential condition) for campfires, collaboration and community.
Photo by akseabird

Storytelling

Like Music & Marketing Campfires Best With Stories
Stories are the "product" of a good campfire. People share stories to be entertained and to get to know their fellow campfire lovers. Internet marketing is about the stories we craft, share and evolve.

We can't LISTEN if we aren't willing to share. Our story starts the marshmallow rolling. As others share we, the marketing team who built the fire need to listen and learn.
Photo by jkirkhart35

Marketing

Is Your Web Marketing Creating A Campfire?
The real "scale" metric is are your members SHARING more today than yesterday. There is a strange dance. First we must dance alone. As we are joined we must give over to the movement. Our favorite example of this is the First Follower: Leadership Lessons From The Dancing Guy
http://youtu.be/fW8amMCVAJQ

"First follower transforms the lone nut into a leader".
Photo by williamcromar

Tribe Up

More THEM Less YOU ASAP
Perhaps the most difficult transition in today's social / mobile / connected marketing is learning to shut up and listen. Marketers are Type A talkers. We equate quiet with not doing our jobs.

Time to redefine our jobs. Today's marketer must be as much curator, coach, cheerleader as communicator. As marketers we are LESS trusted than as curators. When we share we win, so TRIBE UP and hand over keys to your online kingdom to THEM (customers, contributors and brand advocates) ASAP.
Photo by abardwell

Money

75% of $ In MOST Crowdfunding From YOUR Network Not Theirs.
Ethan Mollick in the Dynamics of Crowdfunding study showed that for most crowdfunding campaigns most of the money comes from the entrepreneurs network. In fact he noted that entrepreneurs with less than 1,000 Facebook followers lowered chances of achieving their ASK.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2088298

The problem is EXCEPTIONS such as Neil Young's Pono ($6M on an ask of $250K) set a VEGAS tone. Exceptions prove Mollick's point - YOU (entrepreneurs) are more likely to raise funds than them (Kickstarter et al.).
Photo by nathanmac87

Authenticity

Authenticity Trumps Money
Robber Barons are dead and gone along with their love of scale. Yes Walmart's logistics may be the 9th wonder of the world, but clean slate brands can create, share and collaborate in ways DISRUPTIVE to even the most mighty GOLIATH.

Highly recommend reading Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath since what we THINK of as advantages are often DISADVANTAGES in a connected social / mobile world.

http://gladwell.com/david-and-goliath/

Time

NOW = Web/Time 
Time is different online. Every other form of marketing communication took TIME. You couldn't send a print ad around rhe world ten seconds from now.

I just paused to send a Tweet on @Scenttrail so today it is possible to send marketing communication around the world at any moment. TIME is different.

Photo by monkeyc.net

Untitled Slide

Imagine web time as a tent pole in the circus. The pole holds up the world. The further we get away from the pole the less we are at the circus. Our new digital marketing job is to watch, listen and curate content that supports, amplifies and shares our brand, memes and products.

The CATCH-22 of the new marketing is the harder you go directly at it the further it gets. Better to sit, plan and listen to what is happening. Figuring out new ways to swing off the pole is never a bad idea as Cirque du Soleil proves.

Tent Pole Near Real Time Marketing

  • Use Social Media. 
  • Reposition content / products to NOW. 
  • Curate positive ripples. 
  • Reward contributors (gamify). 
  • Tigers not monkeys.
Content makes up the first half of your tent pole community the rest. Your content and content you curate from the ripples of your content should be teethed to the pole, swing out and and then wrap back around.

The pole = YOU.
The pole also = NOW.
As your content swings away your job is to wrap it around the pole faster and faster. Do this by:

* Listening.
* Curating and featuring customer content.
* Reward and thank contributors.
* Be more TIGER than MONKEY (i.e. fearless and able to herd and "control" instinctively a little monkey ingenuity is never a bad idea either :).

Untitled Slide

One of the best explanation of how completely Cirque du Soleil obliterated and redefined "circus" is in Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim:
http://www.insead.edu/blueoceanstrategyinstitute/home/index.cfm

Blue Ocean Strategy book on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591396190/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_di7bub01ZM2AA

Cirque du Soleil Disruption

  • Gets rid of high cost animals.
  • Not come to you, YOU come to Cirque.
  • Create new category "acrobatic circus".
  • Riff off of brands (Beatles).
  • Focus = social & visual EXPERIENCE (tweetable).
So GENIUS of a Blue Ocean Strategy (blue ocean not yet turned red from competition) is:

* Lowers costs.
* Disrupts and confuses competition.
* Creates new and "ownable" territory.
* Creates new category not yet turned red from over competition.
* Increases profits.

As the disruptive brand grows in stature and importance partnerships with existing brands fall off of trees (like Beatles Love). Old brands need collaboration and partnerships with disruptive brands to stay relevant and current.

Opposites Attract

  • Stay HUMBLE.
  • Terminal Velocity = SLOW DOWN.
  • Nothing Happening = SPEED UP.
  • LISTENING is an ACTION!
  • Curate more than you CREATE!
Photo by .aditya.

Marty Smith

@Curagami www.Curagami.com @Scenttrail
Easy to reach Team Curagami
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Martin W Smith
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Photo by Gavin Lynn