Communities and Capitalism
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Wed, Apr 30, 2008
The buzz around online communities may have passed an unofficial milestone recently - inclusion in the current rotation of IBM commercials. As metrics go, it is decidedly unscientific, but when "Big Blue" turns its attention to a subject, you can reasonably conclude that it is gaining traction.
Several weekends ago I spent a lot of time enjoying one of my indulgences - watching the Masters telecast for almost every minute it is televised. For those of you who do not watch the Masters, the broadcast has only 4 minutes of commercial interruption an hour, as opposed to the normal 16-20. And the broadcast has only three sponsors, one of which is IBM. As a result, I suspect I saw IBM's entire catalog of current commercials.
On Saturday there was a commercial on the subject of online communities. The general theme of the community ad was simple - turning a social phenomenon into a business tool. It reflects what we see in the market: companies are building communities with varying levels of success and struggling to grasp how these communities can add real value to their business.
I assume that the frequency that a given commercial runs in IBM's rotation would be a relative indicator of where they feel it falls importance-wise. I only saw the community commercial once, while some, such as their "Think Green" themed commercial, I saw 10-15 times over the course of the weekend. Selfishly I hope that the demand for online communities drives the ad into heavy rotation by the time I return to my couch when the U.S. Open is played in the summer.
The tone of the commercial also brought back fond memories of ads that Lotus ran years ago when the Internet was emerging as a business tool called "Work the Web". The ads featured Dennis Leary (yes, that Dennis Leary) berating people about using the Internet for frivolous pursuits instead of money making commerce with such statements as "If you want to surf, move to Maui!" (video). That is right - it was not so long ago that businesses had to be encouraged to take the Internet seriously as a business tool. Communities are moving on a similar arc away from the emphasis on social networking to being a useful tool for business. Must be so - it is now being addressed by an IBM commercial.