News is not only a media product but a vehicle for the democratic process. Throughout the history communication and information have been fundamental sources of power and counter-power, of domination and social change. This is because the fundamental battle being fought in society is the battle over the minds of the people. The way people think determines the fate of norms and values on which societies are constructed. (Castells 2007) For that reason, freedom of expression and freedom of the press have been basic pillars of democracy society.

Television is still the most important provider of public information globally. The growing commercialism of airwaves as a result of privatization of global communication, the deregulation of broadcasting and the technological convergence between television, telecommunication and computing industries, have fundamentally changed the ecology of broadcasting (Thissu, 2007). As a result of this is the competition for winning the audiences that are crucial for the advertising revenue. At the same time, audiences’ interest is waning.

There are two main reasons for that. If in the 80′s and 90′s there were fewer TV and Radio channels, today there is multiply more. In addition, young people are more interested in consuming the Internet. Therefore, media houses are seeking new ways of increasing their revenues. Often this comes from ‘economies of scale and scope’, that is to say reaching larger audiences through bigger conglomerates that can generate a larger turnover. This type of economic logic rarely follows the ideals of socially responsible journalism. As a result, information has become infotainment and citizens to customers.

In the attention-grabbing attempts, the broadcasting companies are taking the worst aspects of the tabloid newspapers. They give relatively little attention to politics, economics, and society. This presents a big threat because people usually rely on news for this kind of information and by not receiving it they tend to fall into ignorance about vital aspects of how their society functions. Some have blamed television for creating the lowest-commondenominator society, arguing that the news media have contributed to a decrease in attention span and the death of curiosity, optimism, civility, compassion for others, and abstract and conceptual reasoning (Arden, 2003, p.48).

Some European countries, like Finland for example, have relied on a balanced combination of public service and private press. Today though, in Finland – a country with a long tradition in freedom of press – due to the financially tight situation created by digitalization, YLE (country’s 2nd largest and the independent public broadcaster) is going through heavy streamlining and re-organization. In particular, radio services are being dismantled and converted into Internet services.

Internet technologies have opened new opportunities especially for the public services making it possible for virtually everybody to mass self communicate, as Castells refers to user generated content. In other words, the public sphere has, at least, the tools to exist independently from political institutions and from the mass media. According to Nokia, You will control 25% of entertainment by 2012.

The ‘diasporic identity’ has usually a close connotation to ‘national identity’. As Ezra and Rwoden note in their book (2006, 16), national identity is… about the experience of belonging to such a community being steeped in its traditions, its rituals and its characteristic modes of discourse. This sense of identity is not actually rooted in the fact that one lives in a certain geographical space of a nation. Thus, emigrants form communities that reflect their national sense of belonging to that same community as they did prior to their geographical disperse and despite of their transnational dispersal. Certainly, we see a lot of examples of  how the diasporic media manifests that national identity in their representation of media. The homeland, being the center of inspiration and the main pattern of information flow.

A relatively new phenomena for the diasporic media is the ‘periphery in the center’ – when the diasporic media have strong impact in shaping and influencing the media of their host countries. For example, Cunningham and Sinclair (2000) suggest that the flow of media not only occurs from the centre to the periphery, but also from the periphery to the centre through centers such as Hong Kong, Mumbai, Mexico City, Cairo which are defining new world regions. They state that ‘the media space of a diaspora tends to be of this kind, to the extent that it is spread throughout several of the national markets which have been the territorial unit for international media distribution in the past’ (2000, 3).

Rethinking place, geography and belonging

Coming back to the diasporic identity, Gilroy in his book ‘The Black Atlantic’ suggests as an alternative to the metaphysics of “race”, nation, and bounded culture coded into the body, diaspora is a concept that problematizes the cultural and historical mechanics of belonging. It disrupts the fundamental power of territory to define identity by breaking the simple sequence of explanatory links between place, location, and consciousness.’ A good example of this are the ‘digital communities’ linking the global and the local by making time and space virtually insignificant.

Tradition challenged by Translation

In their book ‘Spaces of Identity’, Morley and Robin suggest that: ‘In the experience of migration, difference is confronted; boundaries are crossed; cultures are mingled; identities become blurred….The experience of diaspora, and also of exile,…allows us to understand relations between cultures in new ways. The crossing of boundaries brings about a complexity of vision and also a sense of the permeability and contingency of culture.’ In contrast to the concept of ‘blured identity’ I would like to bring up the notion of the ‘evolving identity’. Identity as such, cannot be simply a set of given values, even in isolation, but rather as something ever evolving. Time, space, people and cutures become important influencers in re-shaping the ever evolving diasporic identities.

When I was working for one of the large telecom network providers in product marketing, I had to go through a scrutinizing exercise every time we planed a product launch. This exercise was called called “The One-Page Plan”. After spending a lot of time and effort in workshops, thinking, planning and writing the perfect product marketing launch plan I had to boil it down into one single page. I did not enjoy this exercise, I have to say, mainly because it meant I had to give up all the cool details that made the plan so special. However, I loved the end result. With that one page, I could go to anybody in the organization and professionally summarize what we were going to do for the upcoming six months and why it was important. It made perfect sense. Most of the people in the organization, apart from the team and probably my boss, did not have the time to read a full plan.

So, I’m glad to see that investors prefer the one-page planing too. If you are an entrepreneur seeking funding this is a valuable document to give to investors. It will also help you think your idea through at an early stage.

Here are some practical tips for drafting your One-Page Business Plan:

• What is your best idea? As an enterpreneur, you probably have a lot of good ideas so this planning process should help you to focus and get your best idea on paper.
• What is your vision? You need to know where you are taking your ship first and you need to articulate it. So, you need to summarize and articulate your vision.
• How you will get to your vision? Link your vision to concrete actions that will enable you to make your vision a reality.
• Keep sharing. Every time you share your vision it becomes more of a reality. Be prepared that people will not always agree. It is however important to stay true to your vision.

Also, take a look at this helpful tutorials by business coach Chad Gibson at Watercooler 101 and Babak Nivi at Venture Hacks for further inspiration:

http://venturehacks.com/articles/pitching-hacks-at-stanford

• to build common terminology to categorize different types of startups by their growth potential and risk position
• to provide free documentation and tools for closing smaller deals. The focus is on deals below 1 Million, where the cost of “agreeing and building common understanding” is percentually high considering the size of the deal itself.

As we start working with people and organizations around the globe to develop this initiative for the common good of growth entrepreneurship, I invite you to follow us and join the discussion:

Ari Pelkonen, Ari Pelkonen, Crossing, 2008. woodcut. source: Taidehalli

Susanna Majuri, Birthday. photography. source: Taidehalli

Mimosa Pale, Nuage, 2009. Performanssi.

Mimosa Pale, Nuage, 2009. Performance. source: YouTube

Finland is a small country of five million people and in business terms that means a small marketplace. Most Finnish companies are not only open to internationalisation opportunities, they are bound to get to the international marketplace for them to grow. One of the first steps for this is to learn English – the language of international business.

Take a look at the video clip below. All people in the video speak the same language. However, their body language and the way how they express themselves shows they come from different cultural backgrounds.

Language is a very important part of culture. In additional, understanding the cultural differences between you and your customer is another step towards successful international business. Geert Hofstede has done an excellent work in understanding cultural differences and how it can be used in helping organizsations involved in international business. His research gives us insights into other cultures so that we can be more effective when interacting with people in other countries. He has grouped the main cultural differences into five main dimensions. This is how he explains them:

1. Power Distance Index that is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. Power and inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any society and anybody with some international experience will be aware that ‘all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others’.
2. Individualism on the one side versus its opposite, collectivism, that is the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups. On the individualist side we find societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family. On the collectivist side, we find societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which continue protecting them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.
3. Masculinity versus its opposite, femininity, refers to the distribution of roles between the genders. The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men’s values and women’s values.
4. Uncertainty Avoidance Index indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, different from usual. Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures. The opposite type, uncertainty accepting cultures, are more tolerant of opinions different from what they are used to; they try to have as few rules as possible.
5. Long-Term Orientation versus short-term orientation: values associated with Long Term Orientation are thrift and perseverance; values associated with Short Term Orientation are respect for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting one’s ‘face’. Both the positively and the negatively rated values of this dimension are found in the teachings of Confucius, the most influential Chinese philosopher who lived around 500 B.C.; however, the dimension also applies to countries without a Confucian heritage.

Having read the above, which cultural dimension do you think is demonstrated in the video clip above?

Finally, a practical tip. Next time you visit a customer in a new or unfamiliar country, this tool might be helpful to check before boarding that plane: Compare your home culture with your host culture

To not like an ad is one thing but, to dislike it so much that you take action against it, is quite another. That’s exactly what’s happening today. A Six Degrees’ article on the topic suggests that the norms are changing. In 2001, the Finnish Advertising Ethics Council reports that they had no complaints whatsoever, but now they are becoming more and more common. This is not only in Finland. Let’s take UK as another example. The Advertising Standards Council received 26,433 complaints about 15,556 ads in 2008 only. They must have had a very busy year! Actually, Guardian published an article this spring featuring The Most Complained-about Ads of 2008. You can view them all here but this one’s my favourite:

And, what’ wrong with giving an extra slice of ham to the little one? The sweetest, most ethical ad I’ve seen in a while.

So, I’m very curious to learn what will be the most complained-about ads of 2009. Will it be Rammstein’s new promotional video or the ring tone featuring Jeff Dunham’s popular act that involves Achmed the Dead Terrorrist? Or, maybe some other ones we’re yet to find out about? Hmm, let’s see.

But, I’m not writing this to tell you what’s ethical and what’s not. My question is: why are people complaining so much? Are our ads not hitting the right audiences? My question is more about how well do we target our advertising today? Probably, we should take a closer look at targeting and use more the elements of social media as part of our communication mix. Use of social media can help companies get more insight and understand their audiences better. Social Media is to Marketing what eye contact is to a handshake my Twitter peeps say.

Jeanne and Erika are good examples of the customer 2.0. Born digital, the customer 2.0 can be very different from what we’re used to. Why? Because, in most of the cases, we are simply just not well prepared to start a dialog with them. Customer 2.0 is asking us to make their experience with our brand fun, social and engaging. They are asking us to participate in a conversation with them. They can and do express their opinions about our brand freely and with as sophisticated tools as we do. This way, contributing in building our brand’s image. So, ready or not, we have jumped on the same boat with our customers and started a dialog.

Holding their attention

Here comes the next question: If we’ve handled the dialog part well and they use our services today, does that mean they will use them tomorrow? Holding the attention of the customer 2.0 means we need to hold the attention of their friends and community too. Lesson? We must learn more about their communities and try understand how social networks work.