Q&A: Steve Rubel

I recently caught up with Steve Rubel, Ad Week contributor and Edelman’s Director of Insights, for a quick chat.

According to the AP: How would you tweet your role at Edelman?

Steve Rubel: I am charged with identifying emerging digital trends, channels and technologies and helping our teams and clients fuse them into programs.

ATTAP: You've developed a very specific niche for yourself at Edelman and within the communications industry. Could you briefly describe how you got here?

SR: I have long been fascinated by technology. I got my first computer back in 1982 and was online in 1988. It's been a central part of my life since I was a boy. I have also been in public relations more than 15 years and have long been a fan of the industry and its prospects.

Until about 2004 these were separate. I ran technology PR accounts in the 1990s and early 00s. But other than that I really didn't connect the two.

That changed, however, as publishing technology became easier to use and approachable. I started dabbling with blog software in 2003. I then launched my own blog in 2004 and began to work with my current employer at the time to integrate blogs into client programs. We received a fair amount of media attention at the time because the programs were innovative.

After that I decided I need to go somewhere where I could effect broader change and that landed me in my current role with Edelman. It's my hope that I one day will end my career here and retire as an Edelman employee.

ATTAP: Nearly 70 percent of Americans object being tracked online by advertisers, according to a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkley and a according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 60 percent of Americans restrict access to their online information.

Overall, it looks like people are becoming more savvy and more cautious with how they engage online, while at the same time jumping more enthusiastically into social networking with various Google products, Facebook and the like.

How do you see this impacting the communications industry? If information tracking is so important to the marketing function, should the real questions be around how we can better establish and maintain trust?

SR: Overall I think the data masks a lot. For example, there was a recent study that people don't want to store their data in the cloud. However, the reality is that most of us use web-based email services whether we know it or not.

The younger generations - having grown up in an American Idol culture - seem to be more predisposed to sharing their lives online. There will always be introverts. And more might become cautious as they see the potential risks involved with living a public life.

The upshot for communicators is that there will always be more data and information to contend with from more sources of authority. It might be a small subset of the audience (under 50%) but there will always be people who covet attention that we need to make sure we engage around shared mutual outcomes. That is the key to building trust - working win-win and out in the open.

ATTAP: Assuming trust is really the key to effective communication both online and off, could you briefly describe the rules of the road you live by and counsel to clients?

SR: The rules of the road vary by client but I generally advise, and myself focus, on 10 "c's": curiosity, creativity, content, consistency, confidence, connection, collaboration, commitment, communication and class.

ATTAP: Many of us are highly Google-dependent (at least I am) - from search to email to blogging and everything in between. What do you see as the biggest pros and cons to hosting so much of our personal business and online identity on a single system like this?

SR: There's more upside than downside here. The more they know about us, the more value the system becomes in helping us surface critical information in real-time. The downside is that there's a single point of failure but Google seems to manage this quite well.

ATTAP: Again, while nearly three quarters of people object to being tracked online, people seem more willing to give up their data if they see a reward of some sort. We've seen grocery stores doing this for a while - swiping your discount card for 5 cents off soup. Online privacy is a value proposition; the more information you give up, the greater (or at least more tailored) the user experience.

What have you seen is the threshold for consumers willingly and happily giving up their data for the sake of experience? Are there certain triggers sites like Facebook or Google use more effectively than others to persuade an increased level of sharing?

SR: It really varies by user and by demographic, geographic. Over time there's more value if the system learns from you as Facebook and Google both do. However, the minute they violate that trust they can lose everything they've gained so they need to walk this carefully - and they both do (Facebook is getting better at this every month). The way they can persuade is by keeping the data safe, private and secure while letting you remove it you want to. Google does this quite well. (http://www.dataliberation.org/)

ATTAP: In your recent AdAge column, you talk about the two faces of Facebook, predicting a more Google-like approach to development down the road. But recently, we've seen the company stumble. For instance, the failure of its Beacon advertising product, which broadcast members purchases online.

What would you say is the Facebook's biggest vulnerability as it grows? Should it be more concerned over how to effectively and responsibly leverage user data, developing trust and loyalty - or about competitor platforms like Google Wave?

SR: Facebook's greatest liability is in developing advertising solutions that are too aggressive. Ultimately, I think we'll see them get more into the data services business as their customers begin to realize that engagement buttressed by ads as "air cover" offers the best approach.

The jury is stil out on Google Wave. It's interesting but also incredibly complex. If developers improve on it then it holds potential.

Thatcher has died

Canadian Transport Minister John Baird got some sad news the other day: His 16-year-old tabby cat had died. He let some of his friends know by a quick text reading “Thatcher has died.” And that’s when panic set in.

The text was misinterpreted, and quickly spread. Soon the Canadian Prime Minsiter was alert of Margaret Thatcher’s demise.

According to the AP: Harper's aide Dimitri Soudas, back in Ottawa, was dispatched to confirm the news and start preparing an official statement.

Except the former UK Prime Minister, like Kanye, wasn’t – and is not – dead.

So there are a few lessons learned here. One of which is that Thatcher’s office apparently doesn’t have prepared statements for the death of their 84-year-old ex-PM – which is a little astounding. The second is the speed at which misinformation can be spread. The whole ordeal was resolved within 20 minutes – but it goes to show what an impact a sliver of information can have on the web.

Breaking News: People are lazy when they watch TV

When it was first introduced, advertisers and TV executives thought the DVR was going to be their downfall. They thought audiences would jet past their expensive ads and ultimately kill television.



But it didn’t happen.



Via the NY Times:


Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year.

Why would people pass on the opportunity to skip through to the next chunk of program content?

The most basic reason, according to Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm, is that the behavior that has underpinned television since its invention still persists to a larger degree than expected.



“It’s still a passive activity,” he said.



Two years ago, Nielsen introduced “commercial-plus-three,” to replace the then-standard program rating system. This measured how many ads were watched either live or in playback within three days of its initial airing. And what they’re finding is that with the widespread use of DVR, more people are watching ads than ever before. 


Ten percent more, in fact. 



New York Times writer Bill Carter explained it in an interview on NPR’s “On the Media:”


In the old days of television, when there was no recording at all, if you had a favorite show and it was on 9 o'clock on Thursday night, and then another network said, I'm going to move my best show there, well, you had to make a choice then. Now you don't have to make a choice at all.



The classic in this case, I think, is The Office. It’s on at 9 o'clock on Thursday night. That’s an unbelievably high-profile time period, because CSI, which has been the most popular show on television for years, is also on there, and Grey’s Anatomy, which is a gigantically popular show, is also on there. All three of those shows are now hits because of timeshifting.



So while consumers object to advertisers tracking their online behavior (and yes, that now includes television watching), they’re doing it – and finding some pretty interesting stuff.

Time Warner leaves 64,000 customers vulnerable

It’s pretty impressive that Time Warner Cable manages to provide universally dismal service and yet stays in business. Yay cable monopoly!

From their laughable customer support to the dysfunctional cable boxes, TWC is really one of the most hateable companies. And here’s just one more reason: A “gaping” security hole in their cable modem routers left approximately 64,000 homes wide open to cyber attack.

The hole was discovered by David Chen, who blogs at Chenasaurus, when he was doing work on his friend’s modem.

Chen writes: From within your own network, an intruder can eavesdrop on sensitive data being sent over the Internet and even worse, they can manipulate the DNS address to point trusted sites to malicious servers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks. Someone skilled enough can possibly even modify and install a new firmware onto the router, which can then automatically scan and infect other routers automatically.

He said he called Time Warner to report the problem, to which they said “we are aware of it but we cannot do anything about it.” CNN says there’s a temporary patch in place until the cable company can come up with a permanent solution.

Ummm … Thanks TWC.

I will not be a statistic! Um, unless theres's a discount ...

A few weeks ago, I posted about a recent study from UPenn and UC Berkley that found nearly 70 of Americans oppose being tracked online by advertisers – among other findings.

This past weekend, NPR’s “On the Media” featured a great interview Joseph Turow, lead author of the study and professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

In his conversation with Bob Garfield, Turow sums up his findings:

What the public is concerned about is that the pictures that advertisers draw about you are becoming more and more vivid, and whether or not they have pictures that you would agree with is a really big question. So I think the issue here is how much do people know about what’s going on, and do they have any control over it?

So, for example, if you get an ad, say, from NewYorkTimes.com and it’s tailored to you, it would be great if there were a way that you could know, a) that’s it tailored for you, b) where did they get those data from, c) how does it fit into a larger picture of you that that advertiser or that periodical has? And can you do anything about it?

But what people don’t realize is that advertisers have been doing this for years in the off-line world. Just look at the example of zoned newspaper editions. The NY Times sells a different version of the paper in the North East versus the Mid West. As Garfield points out, the digital world just amplifies the scope of what advertisers can do – analyzing the data “a batrillion ways.”

The funny thing though, is that supermarkets have more data on you than most websites according to Turow. It’s not just a loyalty play, but every time you use a discount card they grab a little more data about your purchase behavior in exchange for a few pennies. And as megastores grow in popularity, many more of us consolidate our shopping experience in one place. Now Wal-Mart can track how you buys groceries, clothing, prescriptions and even how you bank . But still we shop, swiping our club cards and dropping bits of data along the way.

Worth it? Maybe. Duane Reade gives me $5 back for every $100 I spend (which happens way too often). I’m OK if they know what kind of toothpaste I use as long as I get a little something out of the deal.

So the question we come back to is: How much is your privacy worth? A few cents off deodorant, a little extra browser functionality?

As we get savvier about online (and off-line) data collection, it’s a question we’re going to face more and more. For me, like any good communications person, my answer is “it depends.” It depends on how the data is collected – are they just taking it, or did they ask my permission? It depends on what it’s used for – obviously I know it’s used to market at me, but my data be given out? And it depends on what’s in it for me – don’t just take data from me, but give me something back.

Time will tell, but as we move further into the digital future people will become more savvy and less sensitive about data collection and what they allow be collected. We’ll see.

Scandalized by the Web ... or ... Shooting Yourself in the Foot

Sometimes maintaining your online privacy is a matter of defending yourself against aggressive online marketers or unethical insurance companies. And sometimes it's just a matter of using some common sense.

Via Switched: In the age of social media, college athletes have it rough. Unlike the pros, these undergrads aren't getting paid millions, but they're under just as much scrutiny. Sometimes, they just can't handle the pressure, and with help from a cell phone, their mistakes get plastered across the Web. Of course, scandals are like catnip to us here at Switched, so we dug up a few of the more embarrassing examples of recent memory.

Read the full story here.

Riding the Wave

Google is riding the wave of world domination with its next product launch ... uh ... Google Wave, which is billed as an online portal that blends email, instant messaging, social networking and workplace collaboration in a single application.

Wave was first debuted in May, and according to C-Net is set to be rolled out to a much wider test audience today.

Tech geeks apparently had their minds blown when they first saw the application a few months back.

Again, according to C-Net, developers “compared Wave to how Google Maps (perhaps not coincidentally developed by the same people behind Google Wave) awoke developers to the possibilities presented by Ajax technologies, which had been around for some time but had yet to gain traction as some of the core technologies used to build the modern Web.”

So again, the question is what is your privacy worth? Can Google have just a little more information in exchange for some more personal data? Broadly, I’d be OK with it. Wondering what all five of my readers think.

Obama's got his Head in the Clouds

It’s a little startling, but I hardly know where any of my files are. I know how to get them, and I’m pretty confident they’re secure. But truly, I have no clue where much of my information is actually stored.

My company just moved offices. Before we did, I sat near the company’s servers where all our digital files were saved. Now our servers are “off-site” – wherever that is – and everything is available through a slightly clunky web-based system.

And it’s the same story with my personal life. I’m a heavy user of Google Docs, Gmail, etc. I have family photos, class papers, insurance documents, loan information saved … somewhere. Where? Not sure.

Without realizing it, I’ve fallen into cloud computing and it’s pretty great. I can get nearly any file mostly anywhere. Traveling, working from home, on my iPhone – virtually everything I need is accessible with little more than a password.

As with anything there are advocates and opponents from the cloud computing idea. The pro-cloud community hails it as the future of computing, increasing users’ online productivity, ability and agility. Opponents see it as, among other things, a vulnerable computing process ripe for data theft.

Perhaps both sides are right. It’s a great new tech advancement with certain vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. As a standard consumer with average computing needs, I’m OK with that.

Nevertheless, even while online privacy advocacy groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) are pressing for an FTC investigation into the safety of cloud computing, the Federal government launched Apps.gov, a website where federal agencies can access “cloud-based” IT services.

While EPIC doesn’t necessarily oppose cloud computing, it claims that Apps.gov – and really cloud computing as a concept – doesn’t adequately address issues of privacy and security, leaving sensitive information about citizens and the government vulnerable.

It’s a debate that will go on for a while, but it’s nice to see the first president to have a Blackberry is jumping into Web 2.0 – although, hopefully, with the appropriate level of caution.

Beacon of Hope

So maybe Sean Lane got what he deserved having purchased his wife’s engagement ring on Overstock.com, but what was intended as a pure act of love became the hallmark example in what ultimately unraveled what Facebook saw as a viable advertising system.

Lane, who’s internet privacy is now shot because of this incident, purchased a diamond ring for Shannon, his bride-to-be, on the high-volume discount website (classy). But without his knowledge or permission his purchase was published on his Facebook news feed through Beacon, one of FB’s advertising products.

The resulting class action court filing, Lane et al vs. Facebook, Inc, describes how it works (via CNET):

"[Whether or not] the user was not a member (of Facebook), Facebook still obtained the notification from the Facebook Beacon Activated Affiliate. Information regarding user activities was sent in real time to a third party Web site--one which was not open or active in the user's browser, and one which, in many cases, the user may never even have visited or heard of."

Got that? So basically, Facebook’s Beacon gathered personal data without users’ permission, or even their membership in Facebook, to sell to their advertising clients. And Overstock isn’t the only one, just the main whipping boy. A similar class action suit against Blockbuster Video is being heard in Texas, and a full list of Beacon clients can be found here.

In 2008 Facebook CEO had this to say about Beacon (via LA Times), "[Beacon] might take some work for us to get this exactly right, [but] is something we think is going to be a really good thing." Nevertheless, Lane et al vs. Facebook was settled last week, and not only will Beacon go dark, but Facebook will donate nearly $10 million to establish a foundation to address online privacy and safety concerns.

So chalk one up for the little guy and the privacy advocates. But what does this mean for the marketers? Will cases like this push them toward greater transparency, or further under the radar of everyday consumers? Only time will tell, but for now, privacy advocates see this as a beacon of hope.

Google v. Skank

While it’s easy to hide behind your keyboard in a veil of anonymity, the expectation of privacy may be a thing of the past.

Last month, Google faced a subpoena to reveal the identity of an anonymous user of its Blogger service (i.e., the one I’m using now) posting to the blog “Skanks in NYC,” which has since been removed. The blogger, now identified as Rosemary Port, had called model Liskula Cohen a “skank” among other choice names.

Cohen decided she wanted to sue for defamation, and pushed the New York courts to issue subpoena, forcing Google to unmask their otherwise anonymous user. Unlike the California courts, which said that “skank” is a “derogatory slang term of recent vintage [and] has no generally recognized meaning,” the New York courts determined that “skank” is a specifically defined word and that the case could move ahead.

Yet, as soon as Google revealed Port’s identity, Cohen dropped the charges. Now Port is planning to sue Google for $15 million.

And as much as I like working the word “skank” into an academically focused blog, there are some real and significant implications here. According to Matt Zimmerman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “If average users on the Internet think that they can use the court system to just figure out who is being mean to them, I think you really open the door for abusing the court system.”

We’re still very much in Wild West phase with the web, adjusting norms, expectations and regulation as it evolves. The courts need to quickly catch up to adequately protect the First Amendment and our rights as private citizens, while understanding the threshold for should and can be legitimately enforced.

(Photo of Liskula Cohen, accused skank, via New York Daily News)

We Live in Public

"Everyone wants fifteen minutes of fame every day. So we built a bunker and showed them the future.” – Joshua Harris

In the early 90s, Joshua Harris was regarded as something of an internet sage, predicting – with striking accuracy – how the web would evolve over the coming decades.

He predicted broadband internet access wouldn’t be available until the year 2000, yet created the first internet television network in 1994. Although he now admits many of his predictions, while correct, were completely made up.

In 1999, a year after the Truman Show was released, Harris began his own web reality project, which is now the subject of feature-length documentary, We Live in Public. You can catch it now through October 1 at LA's Landmark Nuart Theatre.

Taking the MTV Real World format to the ultimate extreme, Harris created an underground bunker where 100 people lived for 30 days, having their every action recorded and broadcast across the web. But unlike the Real World, the subjects had their own monitors too and could interact in real-time with the online viewers.

In a recent interview on NPR’s On the Media, the film’s director, Ondi Timoner, describes the bunker like this:

It was six floors of total chaos. There was an 80-foot-long dining room table where nightly performances occurred. There was free flowing liquor, three meals a day, a communal shower in the shape of a geodesic dome right there in the middle of a pod hotel that was full of capsules that slept over a hundred people.

Everyone had their own surveillance camera and television monitor, and they were required to wear uniforms when they checked in and answer about 500 questions

After 10 years of making sense of 5,000 hours of tape, the film is now on the film festival circuit and looking for a distributor.

But as crazy as it seems, we’re increasingly living our lives in public in much the same way. Just look at Facebook. We all have that friend we haven’t spoken to in years, but still we’ve seen her wedding photos, know the baby is adorable and even what she had for breakfast.

Whether this film is a cautionary tale, or a look into the mind of a modern-day Warhol type, one thing is certain: The idea and expectation of privacy is constantly evolving, and we’re always living in public.

And for my Next Trick

So picture this: Your job sucks, your over-worked, over-extended, under-paid, unappreciated and in debt up to your eyeballs. Your relationship is self-destructing and is quickly becoming toxic. You just want out. Now.

We have all been there on some level. And as things are crumbling down on top of you, we think about how great it would be to just disappear, go totally off the grid and start fresh someplace else with a new identity.

Easier said than done, unless your plan is to become a mountain man and life off the land.

Nevertheless, it is a tempting idea – and one that Mathew Alan Sheppard thought was his best option when he realized he was being investigated in connection with a massive extortion case. So in mid-February, he faked his own drowning and vanished, successfully living under the radar for nearly six months. But it all came undone when he started to miss his family, and the authorities used Sheppard's communication with his wife to track him down in South Dakota.

So Wired Magazine’s Evan Ratliff took this as a challenge. He wanted to see if he could go off the grid, living a “normal” life under a new identity – and whether today’s technology would make this easier or more difficult. His editor acted as the “lead detective,” feeding readers only clues actual law enforcement would have, and offering a $5000 award to whoever could locate Ratliff. His entire experience is documented here.

Ratliff left New York, altering his physical appearance and creating alternate online personae on Facebook and Twitter to evade the growing crowd hoping to find him. He posted contradictory and misleading messages, disguised his IP address, arranged fake UPS deliveries and even deceptively used his EasyPass. But it was his online footprint that was ultimately his undoing. His hunters organized on Facebook and Twitter to stitch together bits of information he left around the web to ultimately track him to a gluten-free pizza parlor in New Orleans. He describes the chase here in a great interview on NPR’s On the Media.

So what does this mean for us – those who will only fantasize about quitting life? Well, a lot actually. Ratliff was undone by a series of details he left on the web, such as his love of “The Great Gatsby” and his allergy to wheat. And we can similarly undo ourselves if we’re not aware of our digital footprint and what is out there for everyone to see. What was once heard as a parental admonishment to clean up your MySpace page, is being heard far and wide across industries and age groups. Recently the Journal of of the American Medical Association released a study showing that medical students are increasingly “unprofessional” on social networking sites

Teyana Taylor may have over-simplified it with her single “Google Me Baby,” but that is the long and the short of it. In today’s networked society, we are all findable, and whatever we put on the web stays on the web.

Ten Unread Messages

The other day, I opened up Gmail and Google told me I had 10 unread messages. But soon I realized that wasn’t quite accurate. They’ve all been read – just not by me.

With the start of September comes the beginning of classes at Columbia University, as well as the stark realization that tuition is due. One of the 10 unread messages in my inbox was a friendly reminder from the bursar to get my act together and cut a check.

But it turns out Google got to my mail first and let their advertisers know that I am a graduate student and I might need a loan. There was a subtly placed ad for a student loan at the top of my screen.

I clicked on another message, this one from a friend telling me about her job search. Google had gotten to this one too, and served up an ad for Monster.com.

But the thing is, this doesn’t really bother me. It freaks some people out, but I’m OK with a little targeted advertising in exchange for a pretty decent and free web-based email service. Not everybody agrees, and some think this is one step toward a dangerous scenario where users’ personal data is misused and vulnerable.

But all this got me to thinking: Where is this going, and where does it end? What data should remain private, and what is a fair exchange for increased usability and new services on the web?

Started as a project for a graduate class at Columbia University, this blog will take a look at the changing landscape of online privacy.