somersault

Somersault’s brand & marketing strategist, John Sawyer (@johnasawyer), recommends as reading to ponder Siegel+Gale's (@SiegelGale) just announced first annual Global Brand Simplicity Index™. It answers in the affirmative the question “Does simplicity matter?” The survey of more than 6,000 consumers across 7 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia uncovers the points of complexity and simplicity in people's lives. It also explores the emotional and economic value people place on having a more simplified experience with brands in different industries.

The Index generates a rating of each brand on the simplicity/complexity of their interactions and communications relative to their industry peers. It lists the following implications from the findings:

• Communicate directly, clearly, and without jargon
• Save consumers’ time with increased convenience and accessibility
• Reduce consumers’ stress by providing savings/value
• Make it easy for consumers to use and interact with your brand
• Enable consumers to get more from life: deeper relationships, easygoing lifestyles

Read the PDF report.

Novelist Alton Gansky (@altongansky) is the author of more than 30 books and provides writing services to publishers, agents, businesses, and other authors. On his YouTube channel, he interviewed in 2 sessions Dave Lambert, editorial director for Somersault (@smrsault). Dave explains how Somersault came to be and how it helps content providers take full advantage of the rapidly changing publishing world. Watch the videos.

The Advertising Research Foundation (@The_ARF) features a video of Guy Garcia (@guygarcia), author of The New Mainstream: How the Multicultural Consumer Is Transforming American Business, speaking on the enormous shift in buying power from the diversity that is now the "new normal" driving force of American capitalism. He cites numerous cases that illustrate why "any organization that ignores the lessons of The New Mainstream [the new consumer] is doomed to fail."

Watch the video. What implications does this have for book publishing? As it relates to cover design? Content? Distribution? Marketing?

Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday) displays the optimistic 5-year predictions by Morgan Stanley on the tablet market. Keep in mind that ALL the devices tracked in the forecast are able to be used to read and/or listen to books. The market is growing.

Read the story in full.

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) is covering the Tools of Change 2011 (@toc) conference in NYC. It concludes today. PW’s articles include “Old Pros, New Tools and the Future of Publishing,” “At Morning Keynote, Margaret Atwood Reminds Attendees Change Can Be Bad,” and “Technology Wars Never End.”

Tuesday’s TOC program closed with a keynote presentation by publishing consultant Brian O’Leary (@brianoleary) called “Context First: A Unified Field Theory of Publishing.” ... [H]e tried to outline the need for a publisher shift from a “container-first model,” i.e., an industry geared to focus on physical books, to a “context-first” digitally-focused model, a model that by its very nature will produce content prominently tagged and coded for easy and immediate discovery online, unlike the physical book. It’s a model O’Leary expects to dominate the newly emerging era of the “born-digital”—both the new generation of digital consumers and the digital-first ventures launched to serve their needs.

Read the full PW coverage of the TOC conference.

MediaPost’s MarketingDaily reports that the AMP Agency, a Boston-based branding firm, has completed a study of consumers, "Inside the Buy," that suggests that actually very few consumers between the ages of 25 and 49 are moved to purchase by habit, or sentimental considerations for a brand. It stresses that online information and reviews is what consumers rely on to make their decisions.

The study, based on a Fall 2010 poll of 865 Gen X and Y consumers, looks at what happens in the "consideration phase" of the purchase path, where the Web and what AMP found to be a "new/modern path" to purchase hold sway. The quantitative and qualitative study also addressed a changing view of brand loyalty. The firm found that just 3% of consumers say they are loyal to a particular brand and never buy anything else.

The study, which looks at five product categories -- baby products, consumer electronics, food and beverage, health and beauty, and fashion -- finds that the very idea of loyalty has changed for 97% of consumers. "New consumer behavior is redefining what we view as 'contemporary loyalty'," said Allison Marsh, VP, Consumer Insights at AMP Agency. "With more information, consumers have seized control and are more open to the wide choices in the marketplace."

Read this in full.

Wally Metts (@wmetts) is director of graduate studies in communication at Spring Arbor University. He’s also a consultant, teacher, and journalist. He writes the blog “the daysman.” In a recent post he reviews the current state of affairs in bookselling and concludes, “It’s the end of the bookstore as we know it. Wait, didn’t I see that in You’ve Got Mail? The Shop Around the Corner? But now it’s the big chains and not the independents that are struggling.” He identifies two new developments contributing to the current situation:

First, the Kindle got page numbers. The text book industry in particular must have experienced a collective shudder. And second, a new service, Lendle, now makes it possible to loan your Kindle book to a friend for 14 days. This too is big.

I’m not saying the Kindle is the biggest or the best ebook service. I’m just saying that the rate of innovation in ebooks generally is rapid and irreversible. And cost and convenience will win in the end.

He says it’s not the end of the book, just a new chapter.

Read this in full.

We hope you’re finding our online dashboard for publishing and marketing professionals, SomersaultNOW (http://netvibes.com/somersault), to be useful in staying current with the latest important news and information relating to your work. (Read our announcement about SomersaultNOW.)

We created the dashboard tabs to reflect Somersault's focus on book publishing, editorial oversight, innovation, leadership, branding, marketing/PR, social media, and research for the publishing community. We also included a tab to quickly read breaking religion news stories, another tab to help you monitor your brand every day, and another with links to sites for reading on your mobile device.

One of Somersault’s values is to be flexible and nimble. We’re keeping our eye to the horizon to anticipate the next change-wave coming. So we’ve added to the dashboard the new tab “Future,” where articles by futurists can be read as a way to help you prepare for future technology, future cultural norms, future reading habits, etc., that will impact your publishing strategies and sustainable growth. We hope you’ll benefit from it.

TIME magazine (@TIME) features futurist Raymond Kurzweil’s (see his website) “radical vision for humanity’s immortal future.” It has seismic implications for those of us in book publishing. Book formats morphing into digital entities may not be the only sea change occurring in this century. Here are a few excerpts:

Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It’s an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don’t have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer ... is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.

Kurzweil (@KurzweilAINews) believes we're approaching [the Singularity,] a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

Read this in full.