Another great video from Gary. He speaks the truth, kids. It’s all about ratios (do you really want 500 passive people or 25 passionate people?) and the kind of people you want to help. Yes, help. Rarely is anything successful on the web when you design it to need people. Instead, try making something people need.
Hot off the presses and certainly deserving of its own call-out is a great article that will be appearing in The Screens Issue of this weekend’s New York Times Magainze.
In Multiscreen Mad Men, Jack Hitt moderates a discussion about digital media and the direction it’s heading:
Palmer: There’s a difference. A Super Bowl ad is broadcast and everybody sees the same ad, and it comes from a single source. And so you may have a preference as to whether you liked this ad in comparison to this other ad in the block of ads that you just saw. But when you feel like you’ve discovered something on the Internet, it’s a different relationship to the brand. Say I was one of the first thousand people who saw that Cadbury gorilla ad — where he drums along to Phil Collins — and I send that out to all my friends. There’s a pride that I have in having discovered that, a connection that you actually can’t get with broadcast advertising.
Some great stuff in the issue all-around, eagerly awaiting your Saturday morning coffee.
Looking ahead, as many are laying out plans and budgets for the year in front of us, I thought it’d be important to revisit two major realities of today’s digital world: the big-picture role brands play online and the truth behind engagement, participation, etc.
One “old” post I constantly find myself going back to is David Armano talking about brands being facilitators online instead of, traditionally, broadcasters. Using this thinking often during brainstorms and client meetings, the point here is that as the communication landscape changes – so must a brand and how they react, participate and work with their audiences. From David’s post:
This means that like any good facilitator, they get off center stage, move over to the side and let others do the talking. But just like any good facilitator, the brands who succeed in this direction need to master it as an both and art and science. Good facilitators know how to actively listen, how to create environments which stimulate productive conversations and interactions and most importantly they add incredible value even though they may come across as the least vocal in the group.
Another truth to be mindful of in 2009 is the reality behind participation. As marketers, we like to think every audience we try to reach is 100% engaged and digitally active. Sadly, as Jake points out, that isn’t so.
Most of today’s web community falls into those three buckets. The large majority being an audience who never really engages themslves, taking content and moving on. A small percentage of people actually mold and adust what is out there - but only what is out there, nothing comes from them directly. Finally, the 1% who actually create and drive activity.
A great stat that Jake provides to back-up the 90-9-1 principle:
Just 0.16% of all visitors to YouTube upload videos to it, and 0.2% of visitors to Flickr upload photos.
Even if you’re a “creator,” think about how many photos or videos you upload in a day vs. the amount you passively digest from links found online or passed on from friends. I’d bet that ratio supports the principle behind Jake’s great single-serving site.
In 2009, we should focus on changing both of these realities for the better. The opportunity is there to level the playing field and for brands to become better transparent, active participants with not just the media but their customers and the digital world as a whole. In doing so, hopefully we’ll see the facilitator model be more popular and the 90-9-1 percentages begin to adjust themselves, moving closer and closer to the 100% “participation nirvana” we’re all seeking.
What do you want to see happen in 2009 for the world of PR, interactive marketing, etc.?
A tipster informed me that PRNewswire is using Vibrant Media’s in-text advertising to market itself. Now I haven’t spoken with PRN just yet, but thought it worthwhile to bring this up nonetheless as it’s one of those mediums that people always have an opinion on.
Needless to say, as you can see in this article in last week’s Tennessean, the term “news release” has a double-underline, in green, that when moused-over, brings up the ad shown in the grab above. I haven’t seen anything competitive from Business Wire just yet, and I don’t know if we will or not, as the wires have tended to have different tacks when it comes to this sort of thing.
I bring this up for a couple of reasons – one, I thought it notable that PRN had joined the fray, and two, I’m curious if some of the thoughts that I had back in 2004 still made sense to people, or if they had “grown” into accepting Vibrant Media’s inline ads. Sure, there are plenty of companies that have bought in, and I’m sure – and have heard – that Vibrant Media’s results are very positive, on the whole. But click-throughs, money changing hands, and positive user experiences are completely different things, aren’t they? Or maybe I’m still stuck on the other side of the coin here as a heavy Web user, and one who’d been working in this space well before any of these technologies were put into play.
Interesting piece from Mediaweek on the continued resistance of the big media companies to dropping their resistance to YouTube. Companies like Viacom and others still linger behind their entrenched position that YouTube is a bad actor and that it’s going to violate some part of their core business to allow film clips to appear there.
Ad buyer hesitation I can see to some extent. If your creative process hasn’t undergone the necessary evolution to grow beyond pre-roll 30-second spots then YouTube’s policy against such ads is going to be as confusing to you as a “courtroom” or “cell phone” are going to be to Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. “No pre-roll” ads is just going to give them a headache, so best just to go elsewhere and leave well enough alone.
But media producers should, as I’ve continually said, be looking for just about any piece of online real estate that might be available to use as a distribution platform. Here are their two options:
#1 – Insist that everyone consume content on your terms, a policy that limits audience exposure because of technology, time, established behavior or other factors.
OR
#2 – Allow your content to grow online like a sea monkey through viewer forwarding, embedding and a variety of other tools. I’m not talking about outright piracy of the entire film. That’s wrong. I’m talking about someone pulling their favorite four-minute scene from a movie and use it in a blog post.
I would rather my content get seen – as long as it’s not in the context of theft of the whole thing and with appropriate attribution – than effectively hide it to anyone I didn’t deem cool enough. But I’m kooky like that.
At some point Viacom and others are going to have to look beyond their noses and embrace YouTube and other players, even if it means slackening the control they try to maintain.
I’m really hoping they don’t clamp down on YouTube versions of the Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer that’s set to debut on Thursday. That would be a tremendous mistake since that’s likely to be so popular it could even give Dramatic Chipmunk a run for its money. Saying people can’t share the video in that manner is going to cut off a powerful, passionate chunk of the word of mouth that’s going to be generated about the trailer and the movie as a whole.
If online buzz is supposed to be this Holy Grail of marketing then media companies need to facilitate and not interrupt that buzz when it happens, even if it falls outside their comfort zone.
