Episode 47 - Author Joe Pine on the Principles of Influential Authenticity, The Experience Economy and Phoniness Generating Machines

Transcript

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[music]

Susan Bratton: Welcome to DishyMix, I’m your host Susan Bratton, on todays show you’re going to meet Joseph Pine the second, or Joe Pine as you’ll get to know him. He’s the co-founder of a company called Strategic Horizons, he likes to call it Frameworks Are Us and we’ll talk about that. Joe is an author of some of the best books in the business, and we’re going to get through what those books are, I want to tell you about them and I even have some for you today.

On today’s show we’re going to talk about influential principles of authenticity, the experience economy, something Joe calls narcithropy, narc-ith-ropy. [laughs] We’ll find out about that, it’s something about Oprah and it’s interesting. We’re going to talk about predicting consumer sentiments and I hope we’ll have time to also talk about Amsterdam.

So Joe has been writing books for gosh, about 15 years, he wrote Mass Customization - The New Frontier in Business Competition. Which when I heard the word, the first time I heard the word mass customization, I heard it from Jim Nail who was an analyst at Forester Research and this was in the early 90’s when the book just came out and I thought it was a brilliant concept for online advertising, mass customization of messaging online. Joe then went on to write The Experience Economy - Work is Theatre and Every Business is a Stage. And his newest book which was featured in Time Magazine is a book called Authenticity - What Consumers Really Want, and that’s what we’re going to spend most of our time today talking to Joe about.

Joe Pine: We’re not futurists, we don’t tell you what is going to happen we tell you what already is happening but that you don’t quite see. In today’s environment people are seeking the real, they no longer want the fake from the phoney. Everybody wants the real from the genuine. Something is also authentic if it is not of machine, you know it’s the height of machinery making things and mass producing them for an anonymous set of people is in-authentic. Where-as a craftsman making something with his own hands, with his own tools that he also made himself is authentic.

That’s what the number one business imperative is today is rendering authenticity, is managing the customers perception of authenticity, so that they view your offering, the places in which their offered and by extension your company as authentic. There are two key standards of authenticity, one, being true to self of course and two, being what you say you are to others.

Susan Bratton: Welcome Joe.

Joe Pine: Thank you Susan.

Susan Bratton: I’m very happy to have you here, are you calling me from Minneapolis area today?

Joe Pine: Ah, yes outside of Saint Paul actually where I live.

Susan Bratton: Outside Saint Paul, beautiful and I’m so glad that you’ve had so much success and you’re living in, not in a major market, in a what would you call it, a secondary market? Is Saint Paul a secondary market?

Joe Pine: Well, compared to Minneapolis, they have this inferiority complex in Saint Paul, they don’t like thinking of it as a secondary market but you know, what can you do?

Susan Bratton: Well one of the things that, if you haven’t heard of Joe Pine before, Joe of course has authored these three books. We’re going to spend most of our time talking about authenticity today and he is a consultant at Strategic Horizons. He loves to speak as a matter of fact, his motto is “Have audience, will perform”. So Joe, we’re expecting a good performance today.

Joe Pine: Ah, I would give nothing less for you Susan.

Susan Bratton: You have an audience. You started out teaching at the IBM Advanced Business Institute. You’ve taught at Penn State, at Duke Corporate Education, UCLA, the University of Minnesota, the Harvard Design School and MIT among others and after you wrote The Experience Economy you went to live at the University of Amsterdam as a visiting professor. So we want to hear more about what you’ve done there, um as well as co-founding the European Theatre for the Experience Economy. That sounds very interesting; you live in Saint Paul area. You have a wife and two daughters and I want to hear about this thing that you do where you study and teach Christian Apologetics, I’ve never heard about that so we’re going to save some time at the end of the show to hear about some of your passions like Chai tea and Christian Apologetics.

So, Joe I wanted to read to our listeners just the first paragraph of an excerpt from an article that John Cloud, a writer at Time Magazine, wrote about your latest book. You made the cover of Time Magazine with your book What Consumers Really Want - Authenticity. And by the way I should mention that you have a co-author, you’ve co-authored both of your last books with James Gilmore. So let me read this to everyone and I think it’s really going to set a good tone.

John Cloud entitled his article, the cover story of Time Magazine, Synthetic Authenticity. He says, “Not long ago I found myself in a Hermitage, Tennessee, supermarket studying a bottle of something called All-Purpose Bourbon-Chicken Grill-n-Dip. At the bottom of the label were the words AUTHENTIC FOOD COURT FLAVOR.

It seemed a joke at first. A sauce surely can't be authentic if it tastes of a food court and not of say, your mother's stove. But it wasn't a joke. Promoting products as "authentic" is serious business these days. You’ll notice the word and its variants being used to sell just about everything—Stoli vodka (whose new ad campaign urges you to "Choose Authenticity"), Kool cigarettes ("Be Authentic"), and now expired presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee (who calls himself an "authentic conservative"), the website Highbrowfurniture.com says "Authenticity. Period.", and Claddagh Irish Pub chain (which claims to have an "authentic 'public house' environment," whatever that is) and the state of Maryland, where "even the fun is authentic."

So it says, “Legendary business consultants James Gilmore and Joseph Pine II have written a book about what all these claims mean.”

So I think that’s a great set up Joe for your book, what I get out of what you do at Strategic Horizons is understand this idea of predicting consumer sentiments. That’s, that seems to be what you do and from that grows these ideas about our need for example for authenticity in our marketing.
Joe Pine: Well it’s really not predicting, I mean we’re not futurists, we don’t tell you what’s going to happen we tell you what already is happening but that you don’t quite see.

Susan Bratton: Got it.

Joe Pine: And then we give you a lens to see that, a framework that allows you to make sense of it and then as business people be able to say, OK, ah this is what we should do about it.

Susan Bratton: So in this idea that consumers want authenticity one of the things that you mentioned early in your book are some nods to other authors who have talked about certain market segments like Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class and Paul Ray, the fabulous psychologist who came up with and coined the term Cultural Creative, we’ve talked about that a lot, and Robert Dreher the author of Crunchy Cons. You’re looking at this market segmentation, is there a particular group of consumers who are craving authenticity more than others, or is it a general, I would almost say, not a malaise in our culture but a need or a seeking?

Joe Pine: It is a general need and that’s what we say is that each of those authors talk about a particular class of people for whom authenticity is so very important but we think everybody desires authenticity. Everybody may not do it consciously and may not use the same words to describe it but in todays environment people are seeking the real. They no longer want the fake from the phoney. Everybody wants the real from the genuine.

Susan Bratton: But it seems like everything’s fake now.

Joe Pine: Well, that is the case. That’s one of the reasons why people desire the real because of the toxic level of in-authenticity that we are forced to breath in modern society.

Susan Bratton: How did it happen?

Joe Pine: It’s sort of the natural consequence of what goes on. I mean on of the most contentious parts of our book, that a lot of people disagree with but I think really falls out of just what philosophers say about authenticity, is chapter five that we call our philosophy chapter. And that’s were we looked at what philosophy is for and social critics for that matter, you know for the past several hundred years have said about authenticity. What it means to be authentic and one of the first things we discovered is that rarely do they ever define authenticity. What they do is they define in-authenticity and they tell you don’t do that or don’t be that.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, yeah, you can tell what’s fake but it’s often hard to trust what you think might be real.

Joe Pine: Right, right because, well and here’s the basic conclusion, it is all fake, it is all fake. I mean at least when it comes terms to economic offering, right, the world of business, where somebody buys something from some corporation. It is in fact all fake, that all economic offerings are, are in-authentic. And it simply comes from philosophers viewpoint that says that something is only authentic if it is one not of man. In other words, if it’s not done because of society telling you, it’s what you should do, what you should be. That goes back to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s idea of the noble savage, you know that throws off the dictums of society and goes, becomes his own man in the woods.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, the most pure.

Joe Pine: Exactly pure is a very good way of putting that and something is also authentic if it is not of machine, you know it’s the height of machinery making things and mass producing them for an anonymous set of people is in-authentic. Where-as a craftsman making something with his own hands, with his own tools that he also made himself is authentic. And then finally according to philosophy, something is authentic only if it is not of money. You know we have the term selling out, which means you do something just for money.

Susan Bratton: Sure.

Joe Pine: Well all the economic offerings are done for money, they are done using the height of technology, they are done by corporations under societal rule so you can’t exceed the conclusion that all economic offerings are fake. But we want it real and we can very much perceive them as real and that’s what the number one business imperative is today is rendering authenticity, is managing the customers perception of authenticity, so that they view your offering, the places in which their offered and by extension your company as authentic.

Susan Bratton: So for consumer brands, I would love you to give us three examples of brands that are managing authenticity well, something that their doing and maybe it’s not something that, you know maybe it’s the way they handle their call center. Something along those lines but where are you seeing some actual fine implementations of an authentic connection with customers?

Joe Pine: Well, one of the places you see, sort of this endemic appeal of authenticity is in the personal body care business, I think it’s because these are products that actually touch our bodies and so whether it’s The Body Shop, with its focus on no animal testing and sort of purpose driven view of the world. Or more particularly a company like Lush. Have you ever been inside of a Lush store?

Susan Bratton: Sure.

Joe Pine: It’s an amazing place, I mean it practically exudes authenticity. Where everything is wood inside of there, you know, no plastic like you see at The Body Shop. Even the signs are actually slate chalk boards, are written by hand. Soap comes in slabs. You know as if they made it out the back and put it on these butcher block tables and they cut it just for you to the size that you want and only then do they package it for you. So I think that’s one company that you can point to that really does it well.

Susan Bratton: So maybe even the whole organics movement, the idea of getting back to natural limiting your packaging, that market is doing, the green sustainable market is doing so well right now. That must be because the big driving market of boomers especially is probably seeking that.

Joe Pine: Right and boomers is one area where they really want things authentic, you know the boomers have always been about me, me, me. And what authenticity really is, is conformance to self image. And boomers care more about their self image than a lot of other people. I’m actually doing a speech in a few weeks at a Live Wire summit that’s all about the boomer market place and how you reach them. And its one set of folks that for the most part who really do understand their need for authenticity and what their looking for.

Susan Bratton: Well in your book you said boomers rule the market place and we self actualize through our consumption, so we’re actually defining ourselves by what we purchase.

Joe Pine: Exactly, exactly I mean identity is so important and what we purchase, what we surround ourselves with, what we show off to other people, that we own or that we have or that we wear, are all things that form that self image that we have. That create our identity first for ourselves and then for others, and so it’s therefore true that we not just seek authenticity but that we also display our authenticity.

Susan Bratton: So before we go to a break I want to talk about this concept that you have of influential authenticity principles. It’s on page 77 of your latest book and I want you to walk us briefly through what the principles are so we can start to think about how to apply this to our own business.

Joe Pine: Well, influential authenticity is one of five genres of authenticity that we talk about in the book. And it’s basically where, because people tend to perceive as authentic anything that exerts influence on other entities. That calls us as human beings to a higher goal, and provides a foretaste of a better way. Things that are not without meaning. And where you see influential authenticity most specifically is in what I call three word offerings.

Three word offerings are what I call fair trade coffee, dolphin safe tuna, free range chickens, non GM crops, any time you see someone using three words you know that they are appealing to influential authenticity. So there’s a number of ways to do it, so the five principles and for every one of these five genres we outline five different principles for doing it, are just, it’s really just a start though I mean these five ways are things that we discerned today but there are myriad ways in which people can appeal to each one of these genres.

So influential authenticity is number one, it’s an appeal to personal aspiration. Is what aspirations of individuals can you help fulfil. So for example you pointed out, that people increasingly wanted green well if you can help them personally change their carbon footprint then you’re helping achieve that personal aspiration. The second principal is appeal to collective aspirations, the shared aspirations we have amongst a group of folks and where you’re really making a difference in the world. I mean think about what’s going on right now both in Myanmar and in China.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Joe Pine: You know I’ve been to Chengdu China several times, you know one of the places that we highlight in the book is Jin Li Street in Chengdu China. I know people that are there and anything that companies can do, and you think of for example, what Wal-Mart did with hurricane Katrina. In making a difference for a set of people is an appeal to collective aspirations. The third principle is to embrace art and art can have such an influence in our lives and again give us a foretaste of a better way. So if you can integrate art into your every day business you can appeal to influential authenticity. A fourth principle is to promote a cause, to find a social cause that makes sense for you as a business that align with your customers and what makes sense for them, something that you can then therefore passionately promote and help to a affect events. And the fifth principle is give meaning, is finding a meaningful purpose that you can infuse into your offering. Such as again we talked about The Body Shop with no animal testing is a purpose that they have. Or Ethos Water now owned by Starbucks which has the purpose of providing clean water into un-developed countries and so forth. All of those ways appeal to influential authenticity and make it more likely that we’re going to perceive an offering as authentic.

Susan Bratton: It’s interesting, two things are coming to my mind, the first one is that I know that as humans we’re motivated by two core needs or concerns. One is fear and one is desire and your influential authenticity principles are all desire based.

Joe Pine: Right.

Susan Bratton: The second thing that I’m noticing is that I recently interviewing Patricia Martin she’s the author of The Renaissance Generation and she talks a lot about experience, ritual, the embracing of art and philanthropy by corporations as a way to connect with your customer in a more authentic way. I wonder if you’ve read her book, have you read that?

Joe Pine: Ah, No I haven’t.

Susan Bratton: OK, I’ve got to introduce the two of you because you’re both saying very; you’re both noticing many things about how to reach consumers today. So I’ll make that connection and DishyMix listeners if you haven’t listened to that I’d recommend you listen to “The Ren Gen” author Patricia Martin on a previous DishyMix.

So we’re going to break and when we come back I want to talk to you a little bit more about the new rules of engagement and a little bit more about The Experience Economy because so much of what you’ve done is, you really need to understand both of the principles of your work, because they’re very, they dovetail in big ways. And I want to apply those to some of, what I think, our listeners needs are. So we’re going to go to a break, I also want to let you know that one of my sponsors, since we’re going to break and you’re thinking about my sponsors I hope now. One of my sponsors is audible, and you can actually get Joe’s book for free, you can download The Experience Economy for free, you join their listeners club it’s an opt in, you can opt out any time and you get the first download free so I think you go to audiblepodcast.com/dishy and that’ll get you a free book and you can get started.

And then you can get Authenticity from us ‘cause Joe gave me three autographed copies of Authenticity and all I’d love you to do is just post a comment to the blog where I blog about Joe or go to the DishyMix fan club in Facebook and post a comment about this show and I’ll be happy, and ask me for the book and I’ll be happy to mail it to you. I’ve got three autographed copies of Authenticity take advantage of that. So we’ll go to a break to thank our sponsors and we’ll be right back. I’m your host Susan Bratton and we’re with Joe Pine.

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Susan Bratton: Great we’re back, I’m your host Susan Bratton and we’re with Joe Pine, Joe is the co-founder of a company called Strategic Horizons, he’s also the author of three books. The most recent is Authenticity, What Consumers Really Want. But I wanted to go back Joe to your previous book, The Experience Economy – Work is Theatre and Every Business is a Stage. I really want to understand this idea that you have about commodities moving to goods and services moving to experience and then to transformation. You’re actually going beyond the experience economy to something called transformation. Kick through the brick for us in that concept.

Joe Pine: Well what’s going on in the world of business today is that goods and services are everywhere being commoditized. Goods and services are no longer enough. So what companies need to do is they need to shift up a level in what we call this progression of economic value from commodities, to goods, to services, now to experiences. And the most important thing to understand is that experiences are in fact a distinct economic offering. As distinct from services, as services are from goods. Basically when you use goods as props and services as the stage to engage each person in an inherently personal way and thereby create a memory which is the hallmark of the experience.

So you see companies the world over get into the experience economy where experiences are becoming the predominant economic offering. And we did ask ourselves the question ok well if there is an economic offering after goods and one after services then, well what would be the one after experiences. And that is a transformation. That’s where you use experiences as the raw material to guide customers to change. So transformations is really what the health care industry is about, guiding people to change from a sick to well. Fitness centers and personal coaches, guiding people to change from flabby to fit and even education and management consulting and that are all about where you help customers figure out what their aspirations are and help them achieve those aspirations. I see a lot of that on DishyMix by the way.

Susan Bratton: Oh so yeah, of course I asked Joe to look at my site, personal life media, I really, what I was worried about when I read that Time Magazine thing with you know Stoli and Kool cigarettes and everybody using the word authenticity and I kind of blushed to myself and thought, oh god that’s what I do. I talk about the fact that the shows on my network are authentic content. They’re not sound bites or they’re not compressed down. They are deeper, we use real words for things, we say shit if it’s shit and that’s the beauty of podcasting to me, is that. You know its long tail content but there’s a level of authenticity. Joe I had you look at my site and I would love your opinion about whether you know my tag line is “Juicy, Lifestyle Content for People at the Leading Edge of Culture”. But it feels like I’m trying to drive that now that I’ve read your book. I’m worried that I’m coming off, what I’m trying to be is authentic and what I think I am coming off as in-authentic.

Joe Pine: Well one of the things that will make people perceive you as in-authentic is actually using the term authentic.

Susan Bratton: Right, so I didn’t do that, but I came damn close.

Joe Pine: Right and I didn’t see it.

Susan Bratton: It’s not.

Joe Pine: And maybe it is buried in there and maybe in the actual podcast when you talk about that way, but it doesn’t say that it’s not like you know, bourbon-chicken flavor with authentic food court flavour. And you do see that all the time, you see companies claiming, or pro-claiming to be authentic or real and that’s not the way to do it. That’s why we use the word render. You don’t want to say your authentic you want to render yourself authentic. And in looking at your site, I think for those folks that are in particular, from what I can tell, looking at integration their personal and their work lives that are in fact have a set of personal aspirations. That want to be more purpose filled, and that want to have a better life, basically, in that personal life but recognizing that work is such a big part of it, that, in fact this site is going to come out as authentic. They think there is stuff in here that I can find for me, that in fact that very first one that me, ah no I understand the purpose in your madness right. This is why you pointed out influential authenticity, because that’s what I see you doing. You know is that, that very first principle I talked about, appeal to personal aspirations.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Joe Pine: Is what Personal Life Media does.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. I try to use words like frank discussion rather than authentic conversation.

Joe Pine: Right.

Susan Bratton: Because it feels more like what I would say, hey let’s be frank, let’s talk straight. Straight talk.

Joe Pine: Right and its more accurate too, it’s a more specific. It’s a more specific word that describes what you are doing. And one of, you know there are two key standards of authenticity, one, being true to self of course and two, being what you say you are to others. And that’s where the representation of what you do, the words you use, the appearance that you display on the website. All of those need to render yourself authentic so that what you say about yourself, in fact matches what people encounter when they get into it and they read the blogs and they listen to the podcasts.

Susan Bratton: So you said two things, the first one I missed and the second one was be what you say you are to others, what’s the first?

Joe Pine: Well the first one is being true to self.

Susan Bratton: Being true to self, got it.

Joe Pine: That’s the one that everybody points to most, you’ve got to be true to self. That’s a very self directed standard, that says does what we do match who we are?

Susan Bratton: Yes.

Joe Pine: As companies, and the second one says does what we say about ourselves to others, that’s other focus, does that match what they actually encounter with us.

Susan Bratton: So a couple of things, a lot of my listeners are doing marketing for consumer brands or B2B brands. A lot of my listeners are doing what I consider to be trade marketing, they’re in the business of selling technology and services to marketers to help them run their campaigns or they are web services marketers. There is no brick and mortar, it’s all clicks it’s a web service online. How do companies like that leverage your principles and market themselves and how do they be more authentic in their business?

Joe Pine: Right, well the principles still apply, whether or not you have a physical place, in fact in chapter eight of the book which is basically our marketing chapter and it’s the one that feeds off of that standard of being what you say you are to others. One of the things we talk about there is that for so many companies advertising has become a phoniness generating machine.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Joe Pine: Because people can’t help but exaggerate what they really are in their advertisements. So the best way to generate any demand for any offering is to do what we call place making. Where you create places where people can experience who you really are. ‘Cause then there can be no disconnect between what you actually say about yourself and what people encounter because they become one and the same thing. Well obviously physical places is a great way to do that and you see many companies using that principle whether it’s Apple stores or American Girl Places or ING Direct Cafes. But also virtual places can be done that way as you can create a place where people want to come to, where they want to hang out and where they encounter you and where what you display on your website through your media is the representation of who you are and can render yourself authentic.

Susan Bratton: So I think we’re going to have to read your book and really apply it uniquely to each of our businesses there is a tonne of information there. I want to pop, we’ve got about five minutes left of the show and I just want to pop around to little things here and there and here and there.

Joe Pine: Sure.

Susan Bratton: So let’s go on a, like we’re going to be skipping across a river on rocks, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, quickly to get to the other side.

Joe Pine: OK.

Susan Bratton: And have some fun while we are doing it, look at that beautiful river flowing by. Narcithropy, OK that’s a sniglet and a half, tell us the, it’s a funny word but its beautiful man, you captured it. Tell us that.

Joe Pine: Well what’s so many people practice when they think their practicing philanthropy is in fact narcithropy. Is what they’re really doing is they’re giving to others really to feel better about themselves and you just see that all the time. I’m reminded of, you know Jamie Fox you know one time talked about going down to help the victims of Katrina and you ask why and he says, well ‘cause you got to show people your real. You know, was he really there for the victims or was he there for himself.

Susan Bratton: He was there for himself, got it, and you talked about Oprah giving things away.

Joe Pine: Right, you know whether it’s giving away cars on it or establishing overseas schools in her name, you know it all serves to attract viewers to her. Attention to her, even when it has a good motive it’s very hard to separate that narcissism of it.

Susan Bratton: So my next question, next rock, hop hop is, I want you to tell me the very first thing that comes into your mind when I ask you this question. And I want you to describe it visually for me, your most favourite thing about Amsterdam.

Joe Pine: Oh walking around and just experiencing the people and the place and the streets and the shops.

Susan Bratton: What’s it look like?

Joe Pine: It’s very, it’s very old world all the buildings are generally from the 16th and 17th sometimes 18th century. The center of Amsterdam there are no buildings over four stories tall, you know because it’s all built on water, they’d sink. And it just has this wonderful old world appeal to it, you know it’s incredibly walkable.

Susan Bratton: And the canals.

Joe Pine: Right, right I mean you get lost in the place, and there is always water there. They have more canals than Venice does.

Susan Bratton: It’s exactly what popped into my head. When I asked you the question of course my brain answers it too, right and my visual was the brownstones, you know the beautiful stone. The small, quaint, stone buildings along the canals and the beautiful trees that hang over into the canals and the little foot bridges over them and the boats going by. And it’s just; it is the place you want to spend all your time walking around. So second question about Amsterdam. Pop. Next rock. What do the Dutch people think about Americans? What’s the snide, most snottiest, crappy, stuck up thing that they think their superior about that we’re not?

Joe Pine: [laughs] Well they think Americans like plastic fantasy Disneyland experiences where as the Dutch like real, genuine, authentic experiences.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, why do they think we’re so “fakey”, because that’s imbued in our marketing, in the way we present ourselves?

Joe Pine: Yeah well partly because we’re so young, you know we’ve only been around for a couple of hundred years.

Susan Bratton: Well, we don’t have all those old brick buildings.

Joe Pine: Exactly well you know we’ve got all these bright shiny glass buildings and everything and we do have, you know, several theme parks.

Susan Bratton: Several theme parks [laughs] we are known for our theme parks.

Joe Pine: Right, although in fact, the Netherlands has a theme park Efteling, based on fairy tales that opened up two years before Disneyland.

Susan Bratton: Well they also have a miniature them park called Madurodam which is a miniature replica of all of the sites of Holland, which is great actually ‘cause you can go there and you can walk around Holland.

Joe Pine: Right well in fact, but think of it this way all of Holland is a theme park.

Susan Bratton: Yes because it was all rebuilt, with the exception of a few buildings in Amsterdam.

Joe Pine: Exactly it’s all reclaimed from the sea or otherwise, moved, modified and manicured to look as if it is has always been there.

Susan Bratton: They love their cow pastures.

Joe Pine: Yes, their romantic outdoor theatre they call it.

Susan Bratton: Yes, exactly I love it; it’s one of my favorite countries in the world. I lived there a couple of years ago.

Joe Pine: Oh really.

Susan Bratton: For the summer and with our family we traded homes with a Dutch family and so we lived in their house, they lived in ours. I tried to cook in her kitchen she tried to cook in mine.

Joe Pine: Was it actually in Amsterdam or was it somewhere else?

Susan Bratton: Rotterdam.

Joe Pine: In Rotterdam, OK, well that’s much more modern than Amsterdam.

Susan Bratton: Of course because the entire thing was bombed, it was a flattened city so they rebuilt it. Yeah so um, gosh, there’s so many things I want to ask you but I’ll tell you this was a very interesting answer for me so I ask the same set of questions for every guest, before hand. Just to see what I get, you know. It’s a good judge for me of how much people are willing to give me. You gave me a lot actually, but the one that was my favourite answer was where will social networking evolve from today? Where are we going with social networking? And here’s what you wrote.

You wrote; “In to something done, some of the time when online at a computer to something that becomes part and parcel of everyday life everywhere. And where the power of that network is harnessed to achieve what I call experience guiding. Helping individuals experience what they need or want to experience every day, every moment.” Wow, tell us about experience guiding.

Joe Pine: Well experience guiding is basically a transformational offering, that helps people achieve their aspirations by guiding them through the set of experiences that they should have. So imagine you know I’m flying tonight to Germany and I’m going through Schiphol airport. So image I am going through Schiphol airport outside of Amsterdam and I get a text message on my phone that says Susan of Personal Life Media happens to be at Schiphol airport right now too. Right.

Susan Bratton: Mm, I would eat cheese with you there, and drink beer.

Joe Pine: Right exactly well there is actually two Starbucks at Schiphol.

Susan Bratton: I don’t want to, I know you’re the chai guy but I like the beer, we’re going to have beer and cheese.

Joe Pine: Beer, OK, but then we would say OK I’m able to meet up with people. Or to say, did you know that your favourite Vermire painting is being displayed at the Rijks museum there at Schiphol airport.

Susan Bratton: Love it there.

Joe Pine: You know when you go to Nuremburg you know that you of course want to go see the place where the trials were held and visit that and it’s just, what you want is that, your social networking because it’s able to capture you know what your favourite experiences in Amsterdam are. Knowing that what you tend to like, is what I tend to like. That I aught to go what somebody I trust tells me is there favourite experience and so forth until, and so we’re basically using the network to determine what we should be doing to be able to fulfil our personal aspirations.

Susan Bratton: Yeah right, now, we’re spending our time, I know we are running a little longer, so I just want to tell this one last thing and talk to you about it. Right now I’m on of course, Facebook and Linked In and those kinds of things as many people are. But I also joined things like Mosio, I just joined that this week. M-O-S-I-O, which is a way that you can ask questions from your cell phone and anybody who’s sitting at their computer who’s joined in the network could answer that question for you. So a lot of times I call my husband when I’m driving and go hey could you tell me where the such and such is in this town and he’ll look it up for me. He’s going to be much relieved that now I have Mosio to ask. Another one is Doppler which is the one were you put in all the places your going and then your friends can know when your going to be in their town or when your both going to be in a place together. So that’s like one point right. Go ahead.

Joe Pine: You know one I just heard about today, Twizney.

Susan Bratton: Twizney!

Joe Pine: Twitter plus Disney, it’s for people who are inside the park right now Twittering each other, saying…

Susan Bratton: Wow.

Joe Pine: …hey the line’s short over here you need to go see this characters out over there and so forth.

Susan Bratton: Oh that’s funny, yeah well usually they use the hash mark. If you do a hash mark, the pound sign and then the location that you’re at, at which you are. I hate, my grammar is getting so bad. Then other people can also Twitter you back about that place or that location it happens a lot for conferences where they’ll do pound, South by South West or things like that so Twizney that’s a good one. We’ll I think the next generation of that of course is that we’re going to mash all those things together, so it’s a single. I just downloaded something called alert thingy, talk about an authentic name, alertthingy.com.

Joe Pine: You can’t get much more descriptive than that.

Susan Bratton: No I thought it was terrific it’s a feed, it pulls your feed in from many different places that people are posting, your friends are posting their information and then tracks the links of the comments that people make to those posts. And it’s kind of a next level up from a single app like a Twitter or a Doppler or what have you.

Joe Pine: Right, now imagine applying some intelligence on top of that that actually does alert you not to all the things that are out there but the ones that are truly important to you right there, right then.
Susan Bratton: Yeah, exactly. That’s where it’s going man and I can’t wait and I am going to be there every step of the way, how about you?

Joe Pine: Alright.

Susan Bratton: Well, Joe, I’ve had such a nice time talking to you, Thanks for going a little long with us today and to our DishyMix listeners listening in, I hope it was as enjoyable for you as it was for me and thanks for giving me that extra time with Joe I appreciate that you’re still tuned in. Joe, safe travels today.

Joe Pine: Thank you Susan.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, it was great to have you, just want to remind you that if you join the DishyMix fan club on Facebook I give away goodies. I have a listeners survey I am looking for you to fill out, it’s anonymous and it takes five minutes. You can get to it from DishyMix.com. Forward my show to a friend I’d love it if you’d share Joe today with someone else who you think would enjoy this conversation. And if you’d like to send transcripts via email they are at PersonalLifeMedia.com. Just click on my face Dishy Mix and you’ll see the transcripts. I aim to please. Thanks so much for tuning in today I look forward to connecting with you next week. I’m your host Susan Bratton. Have a great day.

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