Denuo - denuology.com

Social media matters. Despite all the hype, I think we can agree there is tremendous potential in using it as a platform for building deeper relationships with your customer, allowing you to talk to them consistently over a longer period of time. That’s why most companies collect the likes, the follows, and the subscriptions (how many do you still know that don’t?). Some take it further – monitoring online conversations, setting up more robust communities or Facebook platforms, using a service to identify “influencers”.

But one area of social (and I’m lumping relationship marketing in here because they are so closely linked or at least should be) is still criminally overlooked in all but a few cases: the content. In other words, you have the attention of your faithful and the signal they want to hear from you. But what are you actually saying?

In many ways it’s a trickier problem than communicating via paid advertising a few times a year or whenever the campaign needs a refresh.  This is an ongoing stream of content meant to not only engage an audience but also respond and adapt to their feedback. It’s content as conversation. In essence, it is content that lives and breathes and behaves like a person. We call it continuous content at Denuo and believe it represents the next great creative frontier.

Over the course of this week, a few Denuologists will be posting their impressions from CES. Here is the first with more to follow:

Last week was my first time at CES and now I understand why Apple doesn’t show up here. Don’t get me wrong: the inexorable onward march of technology is impressive. Incremental gains are being made every year in processing power, graphic quality, and size. But put it all together under a single convention center roof and much of it just feels desperate; companies urgently trying to get your attention to tout the fact that the 2 inch paper-thin display from last year is now down to 1.2 inches. The 3DTV displays go on for miles, showing you what every form of content looks like in 3D (Documentaries! Cooking shows!). Most of the booths seemed to have an implicit sign hanging over them reading “WE NEED YOUR MONEY”. It reminded me that for every breakthrough we embrace, whether it be CDs, HDTV, or MP3 players, there is a pile of innovations where the public collectively shrugged its shoulders (Laserdisc anyone?).

Snow on the ground, a new year around the corner, must be time for the Top 100. As always, this is not an exact science but that never stops me from painstakingly ranking each one. The list follows but first the same ol’ rules and caveats:

+ They are listed in reverse order because that is the only real way to do a list. Any of you with any sense of drama will listen to the whole thing from 100 slowly building up to number 1, at which point you will practically be bursting with excitement.

+ These are tracks, not necessarily singles. Covers qualify as well though I usually only include ones that are markedly different than the originals.

+ I only have one song per artist because the list is way cooler that way. Having 12 Arcade Fire tracks in the Top 100 feels pretty anticlimactic. Everybody gets a shot this way.

+ They were all released in 2010 on either an album or as a single. Sometimes the album came out last year but it was released as a single this year (or vice versa). That is a loophole I happily exploit.

+ If I’m wrong about the release date of something, blame Wikipedia and Rhapsody.

The list is below and every song title features a link to that song. It got much harder this year thanks to MySpace destroying iMeem and Apple ruining LaLa. Thank you corporate overlords. If you have Rhapsody, you can find 88 of the songs assembled as a playlist here. Know that the Rhapsody list is missing songs # 100, 91, 81, 73, 69, 65, 64, 48, 45, 42, 39, and 30 so you’ll have to revert to this post if you’re a completist (and bravo if you are). Either way, set aside just over six hours to make it through the list. And enjoy.

If you search mentions of the word “denuo” on Twitter you’ll notice they fall into three categories: people talking about our agency, those raving about a band called Denuo, and a surprising number of people who do their tweeting in Latin. That third group is an intriguing set to look into further at a later date but it was Denuo, the band,that first grabbed my attention. They were already camped out at myspace.com/denuo when we formed our group and it all seemed too good to be true: their band logo is mind-blowingly close to ours and the influences section of their MySpace page is basically a perfect combination of Denuo’s annual Top 100 song review and my personal record collection. Topping it all, the music is actually quite good – moody acoustic meditations for rainy days and mellow nights.

I finally decided it was time to track down the guy who was valiantly using the name for rock star purposes. It turned out to be Tom Mason, a college student living in Wales. We spent a bit of time IMing back and forth to figure out just how similar these two Denuos were. It was like meeting up with the long lost Denuologist we didn’t know existed. Here is a somewhat edited transcript:

Unfortuntately,  I only made it to the first day this year so let’s hope my concert-going colleagues will follow up with their take on the other two days.  Here’s my take on Friday – the day you couldn’t throw a glo-stick without hitting someone dressed in oversized sunglasses and lace stockings.