Dear Rupert Murdoch,
Last week, on 4 August, Brand Republic reported that you ‘gave the first hint’ that subscriber levels to The Times pay wall are ‘strong’. Good on you. But what you have done has really hacked me off. You may not care about this. After all, who am I? Well, I am one of your customers. Read More
Google is revamping its image search feature and one of the changes will be the addition of a new ad format called Image Search Ads.
Google: how new image search will look
This is different to Google image ads, so don’t get confused now. Image Search ads feature on the Google Image Search results page and do not contain moving animations or appear anywhere else. What they do do is include a thumbnail image alongside lines of text as written by the brand or person who has bought the ad. Read More
Children’s favourite Walt Disney Studios has become the first brand to take advantage of Twitter’s new feed, @EarlyBird. This feature provides participants with exclusive ‘time-bound’ deals, sneak previews and events. It partners with select advertisers to re-tweet offers they have crafted only for the Twitter community. Partners determine the terms of the offer – such as the availability, amount and price.
Facebook is attempting to grab a bigger slice of ad revenues by touting its ‘like’ ads function to major advertisers including Ford and PepsiCo. Read More
I wanted to try and write a post in the style of Dave Trott, advertising legend, about the difference between advertising and digital. So I did. Let me know what you think:
The client is the most important person in the world. Person.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has reacted to public and media condemnation over the use of its members’ personal data by promising to add privacy controls to the site in the coming weeks. Read More
This is rather worrying – Facebook and MySpace have been sending people’s personal data to advertising companies, breaking promises to consumers that they do not share information without consent, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Read More
As a dot com veteran of more than a decade, my views on Twitter are somewhat skewed by having seen the mighty felled and the meek inherit the earth. There’s no doubt Twitter is hugely influential, but as I’m sure both experts and laymen alike will testify – the way it’s used raises even more questions about what it actually is. Read More
I was at MIPCOM last week and talking to the great and good of the TV industry got me thinking will the internet replace TV or does TV just need to adapt.
For 50 years, the TV industry has delivered content and generated revenue effortlessly along the way. But technology is in danger of pulling its plug.
Can it alter its business model to chart a course into more profitable waters? Or is TV irreversibly sinking?
Advertising revenues are down and news that UK online advertising has overtaken TV doesn’t make the picture any brighter. And look at these facts and figures:
• By 2010 Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
• 96% of generation Y in the first world have joined a social network
• Years it took to reach 50 million users: Radio (38 years), TV (13 years), Internet (4 years), iPod (3 years).
• Facebook has added 100 million users in less than 9 months
• The second largest search engine in the world, based on number of searches conducted, is YouTube
• Only 14% of people trust advertisements
• Only 18% of TV campaigns generate a positive ROI for advertisers
Okay, TV is facing some serious challenges, increased competition from online channels, new technologies, lifestyle changes – call them what you will – but cheer up, the business model might be on its last legs, but there’s life in the old dog yet…
The answer for TV – embrace the online culture.
One billion consumers use social networks and the like. How can TV tap into the commercial potential of such vast numbers of people? The difficult part isn’t to create a presence; its knowing what presence should be created, where and for what purpose.
LISTEN CLOSELY
The truth is you’re involved in the social media space whether you choose to be or not. Listen in to the online buzz in sites like Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Flickr, the various forums, communities and blogs. Social media search engines like whostalkin, Social Mention, Delver or tuSavvy are great to use alongside Google analytics to get a good overview of your social media profile and performance. But for a detailed assessment, get a social media reputation audit done by a professional – you’ll be able to use this score as a benchmark for improvement.
START TALKING TO PEOPLE
Word of mouth – one of the most powerful forms of marketing, and it works so well online. If you’ve got something great – everybody’s talking about it. If you don’t – everybody’s talking about it. Before getting involved in social media, think carefully about your approach. Be prepared to share information or even tell the behind the scenes stories.
START SHARING YOUR CONTENT
Social media channels have a rather large ‘Welcome’ mat don’t you know and getting involved in this space will have a positive effect offline too. CBS has attributed a 200,000 increase in viewers in one month to the strategic placement of sample content on YouTube.
USE VIDEO PLATFORMS (DON’T TRY TO COMPETE AGAINST THEM)
YouTube probably presents the biggest threat but also biggest opportunity for content owners. Did you know that currently an average of 20 hours of video is uploaded every minute? OK, some of it may be there illegally, or poor quality, but audiences flock in their droves. Google, YouTube’s owner, has very deep pockets, so while it continues to build its audience, the commercial pressure is off (for now). And legal wrangles over copyright issues are unlikely to derail them, a recent ruling in Universal Music Group’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Veoh Networks shows that social video sites may actually not be breaking any laws at all, at least not in the USA.
Then there’s Monty Python who placed free clips on their YouTube channel with click-to-buy links underneath. It’s reported that even though the online content is free, Monty Python’s DVD sales skyrocketed 23,000% on Amazon and reached #2 on the Bestseller list.
DISCOVER NEW REVENUE STREAMS
Content has an intrinsic value. Viewers will subscribe to watch it (if it’s good enough), advertisers will pay to be labelled alongside it (for the right price), but the online model is still evolving.
But take Facebook – it has 300m users – audience figures are potentially not the problem – it’s all in the packaging. Subscriptions models using Facebook apps are a potential money-spinner for content owners. Users don’t want to pay multiple subscriptions to access content (hello, Hulu!) so multi-layered content for niche audiences just needs to find suitable homes.
CREATE ONLINE ONLY CONTENT
Broadcasters can show content on their websites, but this is only the starting point. Bebo has a track record for commissioning its own content (KateModern and Sofia’s Diary), funded by tactical sponsorships and product placement.
Joe Hughes,
Yomego – the social media agency.
Coming soon from Free Scott, the new entertainment venture of Ridley Scott and his brother Tony, is a trippy new sci-fi entertainment project called Purefold that plans to let brand’s sponsor the content, and let the audience drive the plot line using social networking platforms.
Produced by Ag8, the concept will see participating brands “…take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.” The project explores transmedia entertainment and will launch off of cross-platform channels.
What?
Purefold just might represent pure gold for brands looking to reach audiences in an extremely interactive format, but as of now, it has a lot of people baffled as to how it will work, what it will be, and if branded content is a good idea or not.
Discussions about Purefold on Friend Feed, the main resource planned to “harvest” story ideas, are already brewing about the question of what it means to be human, the driving theme behind the story that will be loosely based on Blade Runner. Ag8 is getting people to explore the idea of what “transhumanism” is in the Purefold discussion group on Friend Feed, but the project is often met with confusion, with participants trying to understand what is happening, and what role they will play.
For insight as to what people think of Purefold, I’ve been asking around.
A few entertainment insiders were willing to go on the record to share what they think of the project and here is what they had to say:
Jenifer Hanen, a blogger from Los Angeles, was wary of the idea of brand’s sponsoring content based on projects she has seen fail, but likes the DIY media side of the project and the idea to have the plot line driven by the audience. Listen to a conversation I had with Jen about Purefold here.
Film Production Designer Tema L. Staig, who is based in Los Angeles, first reacted to the idea of Purefold saying “The project sounds almost like virtual mad libs for content and advertising.”
She also had this to say:
“Universally, people have always needed to create visual and/or verbal stories and have a cathartic experience through those stories, either through the telling or the viewing. This is what makes us human. This is what connects us across the globe.
Historically, unrelated cultures share similar myths and stories, suggesting that we all have a desire to explain the natural, unnatural, and supernatural. It’s our most primal of needs.
It will be interesting to see how Ag8 takes story telling to humanity’s next level. The idea of us, the greater audience being involved directly in the story is compelling in that it creates (in theory) even more empathy for the characters – those characters are a part of us. It’s our baby, even if just a little bit.
How will it effect society? Will it bring us together around a global campfire? What new brainstorms might it spark? The possibilities are endless.”
Here in London, I asked Mervyn Lyn, who is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Sony Music and often gets involved with branded content for the entertainment company, what he thinks of Purefold. At first reaction, he said it reminds him of MTV’s Dubplate Drama that turned to the audience to drive the story line, a show he enjoyed because it made the viewers feel part of the show. As for letting brand’s sponsor the content, he was cautionary about the idea because so often people are suspicious when a company attempts to sell them something through a new medium.
“It depends how it is done and if it is trying to lean on branded content then they will have to strike a balance between the brand and the content so that each side doesn’t feel they are losing out,” he said.
They need to be very careful in making it driven by advertising because people see this as being railroaded and people will be cynically asking ‘what are they trying to sell me?’”
The approach Purefold is using will be ground breaking in entertainment, according to producers, and it will be distributed according to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, giving both audiences, brands and platforms equal use rights through their participation.
According to Ag8’s Tom Himpe, Purefold will be broadcast across a variety of media platforms and spread virally across the Internet.
“Most brands are aware of the fact that social media has changed the dynamics of the conversation, and they can’t just spell out their message in the same way as with one-way advertising methods,” he said. “We are giving brands the opportunity to create stories over an extended period of time, in collaboration with their audiences and relying on top industry talent in both writing and directing. That’s quite a unique package, especially in view of the fact that they can use the audiovisual assets freely across all their platforms and channels, from retail to mobile, from cinema to television.”
For now Ag8 is not revealing who the brand sponsors will be, but based on Friend Feed discussions the writers are already compiling what the story line will be, all set in the near future. The question many have is how brands will fit into the discussion, and for that, Himpe had this to say:
“There are two ways in which we are “guiding” the conversation. First of all, the brand is setting up the framework of the conversation, by defining one or multiple brand propositions they want to explore and picking a story line through which they want to explore that proposition. This sets up the framework within which we harvest online conversations.
So we’re not just harvesting random conversations across the entire web, we set out specific parameters with the participating brands. Secondly, while we’re listening to what the audience wants to see within the episodes, the ultimate creative control still resides with our editorial team and the Free Scott Directors, who are making creative sense of the audience’s input. So there is another level of control there. However, it’s very important for brands to understand that Purefold is about creating top quality entertainment, and not about extended the length of their tv commercials.
There’s a different balance here, and sure, that’s something they might have to get used to.”
Still confused, but ready to watch Purefold unfold,
-Lisa
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