New Commons Partner - Web 2.0 Consultant

In January 2009, John Speck joined New Commons after more than 15 years working in organizational communications and enterprise technology. The merger of Speck's Real Advertising marketing consultancy with New Commons brought our clients a range of powerful, new capabilities.

As a New Commons Senior Consultant, Speck focuses on brand building, organizational communications and enterprise technology design. His basic approach combines rigorous analysis with creative problem-solving, letting him quickly and accurately identify resistance points in the natural flow of goods, data and communications.

In December 2007, he began presenting his web 2.0 seminar at New Commons and has since given it regularly both in our studio and as a guest speaker for groups like Brown University's John Nicholas Brown Center for the Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. He also hosts regular drop-in sessions where he coaches the New Commons network on web 2.0 issues.

Speck has worked with New Commons clients since 2006, helping them specify web 2.0 software and guiding them through implementation. Clients include Providence College and the RI Division of Statewide Planning. He also develops primary research for client projects, writes and edits most documents and creates a wide variety of media deliverables, including document layouts, informational graphics, websites and short films.

Speck began his advertising career in 1993 writing copy at Providence agency Mariani, Hurley & Chandler. From 1995 to 2000 he helped build the legendary pro audio brand EAW through its trailblazing website and interactive communications. As the original director of marketing at Mediaspace Solutions in 2000, he helped build both a web application and an enterprise system that remain the company's backbone. As principal of Real Advertising, he has helped clients develop brand identities, communicate their uniqueness and engage with markets. He has a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin College (1985).

Real Advertising

I'm a little bit obsessed with advertising and organizational communcitions because my father was, until a few years ago, one of the Mad Men. If you're old enough to remember this, he wrote the words "PanAm makes the going great" whiile working a J. Walter Thompson in the mid-60s. So, literally, I was raised on advertising.

Thus, I hate advertising. But we all do.

Instinctively, we know how far it is from "advertising claim" to "actual fact". There is a point at which some people start to believe that if a corporation is making a statement via paid advertising, that statement is almost certainly false. Falseness is what people dislike advertising.  

That's why I started Real Advertising, my former company. The idea was simple: by drawing all marketing messages directly from the core of each company's culture, that company will necessarily make true claims that will match with customer experience. This matching of message with experience is Real Advertising. 

A substantial part of this work involves a direct and ongoing dialog with customers. Where once this was exclusively a telephone-driven process, today's web 2.0 tools substantially lower the cost barrier to widespread direct communication. 

This generates large amounts of direct, honest conversation from which we pull key threads that become part of a more crafted set of communications. These generally include the 'static' website, printed collateral. At the peak of this structure, we place the rare and refined gems -- those ideas and phrases that go to the core of the company and express its most fundamental truths.

The ultimate such gem is the 30-second TV spot, which I think of as a haiku -- compact, yet powerful because it encompasses so much.

I can think of no better brand to hold as an example than Apple's Mac vs. PC ads. I've used so many different kinds of computers I can't keep track, and Apple makes a spectacular product. My actual customer experience on both Windows- and MacOS-based machines closely matches the situations that the two characters play out in the ads. Unlike virtually every other ad on TV that makes unsupportable claims that have nothing to do with reality, these ads resonate deeply with Apple customers. Especially those who have also used PCs.

Real Advertising, then, is about finding the truths at the center of your corporate culture (where, unsurprisingly, you will find your most passionate customers) and then expressing those truths in a way that resonates with the broader market. 

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