Today's links

• At Last, the Web Goes Truly World-Wide

Today's links

• Google Brings Online Music To the Masses
• This Is It Makes $20M In One Day and Gives Fans Closure
• Local Motors: A New Kind Of Car Company Leverages Crowd-Sourcing
• Stylish Camping At the Opera

Female Forces

I've been having a conversation recently with a psychologist to help test a program he's working on. A program that leverages the concept of role modelling to help people define their goals and values.

While very interesting, there is a lack of women role models represented in the program, in fact Madonna so far is the only one. When asked why, the psychologist said that she was the only input he'd gotten when he asked other women about who they thought should or might be represented.

How strange. Because it's not that there aren't any. So allow me to come up with a few suggestions across discipline, culture, and time - fictional as well as real:

Alicia Keys
Amelia Earhart
Angela Davis

Anita Roddick

Anne Frank

Annie Lennox

Aung San Suu Kyi

Benazir Bhuto

Billie Jean King

Cleopatra

Coco Chanel

Eleanor Roosevelt

Evita Peron

Florence Nightingale

Golda Meir

Gro Harlem Brundtland

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Helen Keller

Hillary Clinton

Indira Gandhi

Jeanne d'Arc
Josephine Baker

Katarina the Great

Katherine Graham

Leonora Christina Ulfeldt

Madeleine Albright

Madonna

Margaret Thatcher

Marie Antoinette

Marie Curie

Marta Stewart

Martina Navratilova

Mary Queen of Scots
Maya Angelou

Mother Theresa

Nadia Comaneci

Oprah Winfrey

Patti Smith

Pocahontas

Princess Diana

Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Victoria
Scarlett O'Hara
Virginia Woolf

Whoopi Goldberg

Today's links

I'll start posting links to stories that (I find) are particularly interesting. Some days there'll be a lot of links, some days there'll be none.

• Google and Bing race to search social media
• Local businesses in Denver ranked by their social benefit
• Volkswagen to rely solely on iPhone app for GTI launch (credit to my friend Ronnie Rocket for this one)

Mind The Gap

Recently, the Danish music industry was granted 9.4 million kroner (1.26 million euros) by the Ministry of Commerce to develop music talent, export, insight, technology solutions, and new business models. As a business professional with a strong music association, I applaud this.

Indeed, one of the major challenges is bridging the gap between the music community and the business community. There is a lot of potential for brands and artists to use each other to develop their respective identities and relationship with their users (fans). So far, though, neither camp seem to understand the other particularly well.

Brands - and often their agencies - treat music as a tactical add-on at best. The artists - and often their record companies and managers - treat brands as a sponsor, rarely as a collaborator, and sometimes just as a wallet.

Brands need to learn how to leverage music strategically, as a powerful dimension and a path to a strong(er) emotional bond between them and their users. Artists need to learn what's on a busy marketing director's agenda, what s/he considers success criteria, and why music often simply isn't a priority. Both need to learn how to create great fits, and also recognize when there is no fit at all.

A coordinating body, Musikzonen (the Music Zone), has been established to manage the 9.4 million kroner from the Ministry of Commerce and facilitate the most effective use of this money. And today, they hosted a kick-off conference to introduce the Musikzonen initiative and provide some inspiration to cross-disciplinary and commercial partnerships. A great conference, and a great idea. Only, the audience was all music industry folks. Apart from one of the co-speakers and me, there was no one from the business community, no consumer experience manager, no brand director, no ad agency executive. The Musikzonen board informed that they'd received a lot of interest from the business community about the overall initiative. Excellent, but then why weren't they there?

And why wasn't one of the speakers a grumpy marketing manager with no interest whatsoever in music but with a desire to look good in front of senior management, hence thinking only of hard KPIs that prove ROI down to the penny? These are the folks that ultimately need to be influenced, if the aforementioned gap is to be bridged.

There's a lot to be said - and done - about the relationship between brands and bands (and fans). The relationship between culture and commerce, between mainstream and new stream. I look forward to the conversation.