Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…
Rebel
These guys are part of a closely intertwined, wildly influential unofficial 21st-century rat pack -- call them
In the analog era, such efforts might have fallen under the soulless rubric of "cross-promotion," but today they have evolved and mashed up into a new buzzword: "transmedia." The difference is that cross-promotion has nothing to do with developing or expanding an established narrative. A Happy Days lunch box, in other words, does nothing to advance the story of Fonzie's personal journey.
While such merchandising campaigns still exist, transmedia offers one big plot twist: X-ray vision. Today's audience, steeped in media and marketing, sees through crass ploys to cash in. So the Geek Elite are taking a different approach. Rather than just shill their products in various media, they are building on new and emerging platforms to expand their mythological worlds. Viewers watch an episode of Heroes, then follow one character's adventure in a graphic novel. They tune in to Lost, then explore the island's twisted history in an online game. It is this "transmedia storytelling," as Alexander puts it, that ultimately lures the audience into buying more stuff -- today, DVDs; tomorrow, who knows what.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/125/rebel-alliance.html
Forbes digs up a few YouTube money stats
Forbes has a story about YouTube with a few hard, if unsourced, financial numbers — the kind Google and YouTube keep very close to the vest.
The article, by Quentin Hardy and Evan Hessel, says YouTube is going to bring in $200 million this year, and possibly $350 million next year. From one perspective that's small taters (the fourth "Indiana Jones" made $126 million in four days), but it's a heck of a lot more than YouTube was making last year, and if there's one sure thing about YouTube, it's that the site isn't going to stop growing anytime soon. It now gets more than 50% of its traffic from overseas (cagey 'Tube executives won't say how much more, but some of us think it's a lot), and they're making partnership deals like rabbits — CBS, Scripps, Universal Music and now even their competitor Hulu.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/05/forbes-digs-up.html
http://www.forbes.com/technology/forbes/2008/0616/050.html
Five Things
Josh Catone over at ReadWriteWeb has an interesting suggestion for Warner Bros. to get folks interested in the upcoming superhero feature, Watchmen: Take a page from Trent Reznor’s book. The Nine Inch Nails front man has been experimenting with innovative distribution and marketing schemes ever since his band said farewell to Universal Music, giving away songs and even uploading an album to the
Now, the music industry isn’t really known as a big innovator. In fact, record labels have long been the lemmings in the coal mine for
Here are five things the studios could learn from the new music biz:
http://newteevee.com/2008/05/28/five-things-hollywood-can-learn-from-music-20/
Broadcast networks under siege
Broadcasting, simply put, isn't casting broadly anymore. As the sweep suggests, the TV networks are losing not just their viewers but also their sense of specialness. They're becoming just the lowest numbers on the multichannel dial, rather than the last outposts of mass culture. It's true that this evolution has been happening for years, but this year a tipping point was reached, a Rubicon crossed. Broadcast exceptionalism -- its supposed immunity from the market forces afflicting all other media -- is finally dead.
And that, fellow viewers, is a huge problem for those acronymic "legacy" networks. One, it undercuts executives' argument to advertisers that broadcast still delivers the most bang for the buck of any media (negotiations for the sale of bulk ad time next TV season are taking place right now, an inconvenient moment to be sure from the networks' standpoint). Also, the broadcasters' economic model, as it currently stands, is simply unsustainable compared with that of their chief competitors, cable networks. More about that in a minute.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-channel26-2008may26,0,5458013.story
Talking Transmedia: An Interview With Starlight Runner's Jeff Gomez (part one)
What kinds of trade-offs have to occur in order to broaden the appeal of media properties?
Studios and entertainment companies are now learning that fewer and fewer trade-offs are necessary to broaden the appeal of niche or "cult media" properties. Contemporary audiences are now primed for high quality genre entertainment across all media platforms. So long as marketing efforts place focus on a driving platform, the launch platform and complementary content can be used to build anticipation, educate audience "gatekeepers" about the property, and enrich the overall experience.
There may be trade-offs, however, when it comes to the level of depth and complexity of the core property and how interdependent the driving platform content is with complementary content. The Wachowski Brothers ran into difficulty with the mass audience reception of the second and third Matrix films, because the films were hard to understand without a working familiarity with the characters and storylines of the orbiting platforms (graphic novels, video games, direct-to-video animation). Hence, at this point in the evolution of transmedia storytelling, it is still vital to present a full and complete entertainment experience within each component of the rollout.
http://henryjenkins.org/2008/05/an_interview_with_starlight_ru.html
More evidence that ad CPMs are higher in the Tail
Following up on my post about how niche social networks can command higher ad CPMs than the big generic sites such Facebook and MySpace, here's some new data from PubMatic that makes a similar point about web publishing:
Not only do small (Long Tail) publishers montetize their content at 3-5 times the rate of the larger publishers in PubMatic's survey, but they're improving in the current environment while the big publisher decline.
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/05/more-evidence-t.html
Can Hotshot Ad Guy Alex Bogusky Make Microsoft Cool?
Now Crispin has been handed perhaps its biggest challenge to date: Microsoft. The tech giant stunned the ad world in March when it passed over safer choices like Fallon, JWT, and its agency of record, McCann Worldgroup, and awarded its new $300 million consumer-branding campaign to Crispin. It was an act of courage or desperation, depending on whom you ask. Over the past couple of years, Microsoft's already problematic reputation in some circles -- as the soulless, power-hungry purveyor of lackluster products -- has suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds. It spent two years and $500 million on the media blitz around the long-delayed Windows Vista launch, only to see the January 2007 "Wow" campaign, which likened Microsoft's new operating system to
Nothing is doing more to carve away at Microsoft's reputation -- and contribute to its loss of market share -- than the assault launched by Apple two years ago in the form of the "Mac vs. PC" spots featuring The Daily Show satirist John Hodgman. The ads became immediate pop-culture fixtures, spawning more than 1,000 video spoofs on YouTube and taking home last year's Grand Effie, the ad industry's highest honor for effectiveness. "Nobody messes with anyone in the tech industry the way Apple has messed with Microsoft," says Enderle. "It's the first time I've ever seen a major national campaign that disparages a competitor, and the competitor just sits back and takes it. If somebody tried to do that to Oracle, you wouldn't be able to find the body." Gartner media research analyst Andrew Frank credits Apple -- whose annual media spend is less than half of Microsoft's nearly $1 billion budget -- with single-handedly rebranding Microsoft "as a kind of self-conscious and self-absorbed nerd that is out of touch with the normal lives and needs of its users."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/126/believe-it-or-not-hes-a-pc.html
Fewer options for SAG
SAG negotiators, including president Alan Rosenberg, were back at it with the studios and networks Thursday, a day after AFTRA reached its tentative deal with the AMPTP.
AFTRA's agreement is similar on key issues as pacts approved this year by the WGA and DGA, and it remains unclear how SAG might mark any further gains in those same areas. Like the others, AFTRA's deal -- now tagged for a membership ratification vote -- includes an increase in base pay, increases in employer contributions to the health and retirement plan and historic new jurisdiction over new media.
"I don't think (SAG is) going to be getting a better deal," entertainment labor attorney Alan Brunswick said. "I'd like to think they're realistic enough to know it doesn't make sense for them to strike by trying to better a deal three other unions have agreed to."
One of the stickiest issues that AFTRA president Roberta Reardon said they faced involved an AMPTP proposal to create a clip library and remove the right of consent for the nonpromotional use of clips. But that effectively was tabled in the tentative AFTRA agreement, to be revisited within three months of the pact's ratification. In the interim, actors will retain their consent rights.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i07a95797894eac56942952cbc07b55d6
Weezer's Memetastic Video Director Spills the 'Pork and Beans'
Since its Friday upload, "Pork and Beans" has amassed an impressive 3.5 million views on YouTube -- and that was even before its televised debut on MTV, which happened late Tuesday.
Wired.com talked to video director Mathew Cullen, co-founder of studio Motion Theory, who spilled the beans on making "Pork and Beans," embracing your inner geek and discovering what Chocolate Rain crooner Tay Zonday is like when the cameras aren't rolling.
Wired.com: OK, 'fess up. Who's the bigger geek -- Motion Theory or Weezer? I'm wondering whose idea it was to use web celebs for this ultimate geek anthem.
Mathew Cullen: Well, we'd been wanting to work with Weezer since their last album ... and five weeks ago Weezer sent us this song, and we immediately got the idea. ["Pork and Beans"] is this amazing song about being happy with who you are. That's exactly where it came from. There's never been a time like now, thanks to YouTube, where people can put themselves out there. So I embraced that concept.
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/05/director-behind.html
Design Thinking
Historically, design has been treated as a downstream step in the development process—the point where designers, who have played no earlier role in the substantive work of innovation, come along and put a beautiful wrapper around the idea. To be sure, this approach has stimulated market growth in many areas by making new products and technologies aesthetically attractive and therefore more desirable to consumers or by enhancing brand perception through smart, evocative advertising and communication strategies. During the latter half of the twentieth century design became an increasingly valuable competitive asset in, for example, the consumer electronics, automotive, and consumer packaged goods industries. But in most others it remained a late-stage add-on.
Now, however, rather than asking designers to make an already developed idea more attractive to consumers, companies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires. The former role is tactical, and results in limited value creation; the latter is strategic, and leads to dramatic new forms of value.
Moreover, as economies in the developed world shift from industrial manufacturing to knowledge work and service delivery, innovation’s terrain is expanding. Its objectives are no longer just physical products; they are new sorts of processes, services, IT-powered interactions, entertainments, and ways of communicating and collaborating—exactly the kinds of human-centered activities in which design thinking can make a decisive difference.
In This Year's Upfront, It's All About Branded Entertainment
A new deal-making process is grabbing attention during the biggest buying time of the TV season: Branded-entertainment conversations are taking precedence over large-volume prime-time bookings this upfront.
To get that $16 billion in cable- and broadcast-TV upfront dollars on the table, the networks are increasingly offering marketers the option to meld their brands' DNA into a story or cause that captures an audience's interest. And that might be a good idea:
With ratings steadily declining and commercial ratings entering their second year as the upfront metric of choice, networks and marketers often fight a losing battle to keep viewers hooked during ad breaks. Branded entertainment is an increasingly attractive solution, giving marketers more engagement with products and allowing networks to charge more for exclusive relationships.
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=127312
The Real Fight Over Fake News
The Webcasting trend is not pleasing the large cable operators. Indeed, when Glenn Britt, the chief executive of Time Warner Cable, was asked recently how he feels about the cable networks putting more content online, he said “Guess what? We do mind.”
Webcasting a program the same day it is broadcast, “will erode your other business model,” Mr. Britt said at the Cable Show in
Alexander Dudley, a Time Warner Cable spokesman, elaborated when I asked him about Viacom’s move to Webcast full episodes of “The Daily Show.”
“They can’t have it both ways,” he said. “If they put content they ask cable companies to pay for online for free, they are making it less valuable and we should be expected to pay less for it.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/the-real-fight-over-fake-news/
Media Companies Endangered by Failure to Discard Outdated Business Models
Today, even as both large media corporations and emerging entrepreneurial enterprises are challenged to identify revenue-generating strategies that can achieve aggressive investor demands, and lip-service is paid to the demands of changing market conditions, most executives remain committed to outdated and dangerous mass-media-dependent economic models. Media companies today - even the largest digital media companies - are in danger of following the railroad industry model and becoming Industrial Age mass distribution vehicles rather than Relationship Age™ interactive brand and human connectors.
Digital media enable ubiquitous access to TV programs that were historically available on a limited basis at a scheduled time on a single channel. But even with content now available 24/7 365 days-a-year, the fundamental business models remain locked into very traditional patterns, as witnessed by the surprisingly traditional Upfront network TV advertising buying and selling season that opens today. TV and advertising agency executives are accustomed to holding on for dear life to old-school business relationships. They celebrate small shifts in strategies and issue press releases almost daily that focus on small steps toward innovation, such as branded entertainment, while clinging to organizational structures that reward consistency, continuity and even failure.
http://www.jackmyers.com/commentary/media-business-report/19216529.html
New Life for Tired Brands
Given the natural ebb and flow of a product’s life, most brand managers will eventually have to make the decision either to stay the course or to abandon ship. And as tempting as starting anew is, it carries its own risks — as Ford’s experience with the Five Hundred shows. But the price of sticking with a faltering brand can be just as disastrous. The problem is that such a decision has always relied on instinct and an appetite for risk. But what if Ford had had a set of tools that could have saved it from its Taurus flip-flop? What principles would have guided the company to decide to revitalize the dormant brand rather than to kill it?
We have developed a tool kit that provides data-driven analytics for making this tough decision. Called the Brand Vitality Assessment (BVA), it examines every aspect of a brand, including its communications strategy, its pricing, and the state of its competitors, to reveal how much life is left in the name. But the process isn’t aimed at just returning brands to their former strength; more often, it’s focused on retaining the core of the brand while finding new opportunities. One such example is Old Spice, a men’s personal care brand that has historically been associated with older men. Owned by Procter & Gamble since 1990, the brand was successfully repositioned among teen males, who had some level of awareness of Old Spice, but were new to the category. That repositioning made its Red Zone antiperspirants and deodorants number one among teenage boys and young men and its other products top sellers in their categories.
