Hard on the heels of all that Blue Peter cat naming chaos, dodgy phone votes and competitions, comes news that Maxim (in the US) has published a review of a CD its reviewer hadn't actually listened to (via the BBC... careful now, people in glasshouses etc etc).
Media brands have long known that trust is among our most precious possessions. At least we say we do - and then keep doing things like the above. Yet there are still those who struggle to understand how inevitable the decline of mass media becomes in these circumstances.
In specialist, consumer media (my world - and that of Maxim) we like to believe that our experts have something more to offer than our communities. Often that comes down to access. That's what makes the Maxim thing so wrong - it faked the access. They pretended they had got to hear the new Black Crowes album before you did. And they hadn't. And as a result the opinion was fake. It was a lie. Even the position of authority Maxim could claim from getting this access was bogus - because the access was never there.
THIS UPDATE:(made me laugh outloud!)."Rapper Nas, whose hits include Hip Hop Is Dead and If I Ruled The World, told the New York Post that he was surprised that Maxim had reviewed his album - because he hadn't finished recording it yet. The magazine called his album "radio friendly" and gave it a rating of 2.5 stars out of five."
Guess what all this does to trust...
No wonder people are making use of the power of the network to create their own networks of trust and to set their own definitions of quality (step forward tripadvisor et al). Relevance over quality folks. Live (or die) by it.
There is still a (potentially lucrative) role for trusted reviewers to give you a tip in the right direction, to start a marketing ball rolling in a believable direction. Trust them and you start to believe the reviewer even without direct experience of the product yourself (it's a core part of Dave Balter's thinking, an idea which permeates his book Grapevine, and the activities of his word-of-mouth marketing company BzzAgent).
I'll be keen to hear what Dave thinks about the regularity with which 'expert' opinion is being revealed as untrustworthy when we meet for lunch in London next month, and the impact of trust being created by networks rather than from the centre.
The Power of the Network means not one but two serious disruptions for media companies to come to terms with.
We've had a while to get used to the idea that we are no longer the owners of the means of production (of content, be it 'editorial, 'advertising' or 'marketing'). We understand that the lowering of technical barriers enabled by blogs and other social networking tools mean that everyone is a publisher now. Not broadcasters, but conversation starters.
The bit that seems harder for us to get our heads round is that this also means we are no longer the owners of the means of distribution.
In a print, tv, radio, (even web1.0) broadcast world we did the distribution. We not only produced the content, we packaged it as we saw fit and handed it out through our chosen channels. There was only one central hub and we were it. So the only way for content (either editorial or marketing messages) to be distributed was by it being broadcast by the same people who created the content, through our channels.
Part two of the disruption would therefore seem obvious: Now everyone creates content, so everyone distributes it.
We saw our position as lone distributor eroded by 'viral' and 'word of mouth' but we didn't really see it as a radical challenge to the status quo of our position as 'the great mouth'.
This is a hard lesson to learn. We imagine that by 'providing a place' for people to aggregrate their user generated (and other) content we can hang on to our role as distributor, as if this can be achieved without collapsing back into broadcast mindsets.
Our aggregating, community-focused plans tick all the right boxes until someone asks about 'reach', or gets excited by how many millions of eyeballs may be scanning that homepage (hello facebook, youtube etc).
I think aggregation is the right approach because members of communities (us included, btw) need to serve one another - individuals blundering around the web cherry-picking little bits of disaggregated content will soon run out of inspiration, for example.
But I also think there's a reason sites which aggregate ugc and conversation (yes that is what facebook does, too) are currently no better at generating high click-thru rates than the rest of the web. That is, there is a reason we struggle to make the business models work.
The models - no doubt responding to those who haven't understood both elements of the disruption - attempt to squeeze the networked production of content into a broadcast-style of distribution. Just look at the page impressions on that. Slap on those banner ads... surely some have to stick... That combined with attemting to take a share of transactions generated (the middle man is only ever the next good idea away from disruption) is about all we see.
The issue is that niche community generated content doesn't lend itself to being broadcast. It's our old friend relevance over quality all over again. One man's 'rubbish' is another man's quality - and the difference is its relevance to that man. A blurred family video of a treasured moment will get distributed to the people who care about it by the people who care about it - but will not become a youtube hit. If you've ever seen a complilation of 'greatest hits from YouTube on TV you'll realise how inappropriate the broadcasting of niche ugc is. Editors selecting for the lowest common denominator get involved. Relevance disappears up the rear-end of a production meeting.
Of course there are rare occasions when someone's niche community generated content breaks out of that niche to become a hit that others want to share. But these are few and far between. The vast majority is in the long tail of 'relevant to me'.
By all means, if advertisers want to give you money to have their wares on show as users fly past them to reach (or upload) the niche content they are actually interested in, you'd be foolish to say no thanks. But response rates remain horribly low - and those responding horribly familiar.
Those advertisers are bound to want something better sooner or later. And when they do, perhaps we can all start coming up with the models that benefit from the fact that networked content production and networked distribution should work together.
Widgets make this requirement clearer, as each day passes.
Trust me, they are more than a tactic.
Widgets are as disruptive to web 'sites' (the notion of the url as home/hub/destination/centralised point of distribution) and therefore to the vestiges of our role as distributors, as blogs and social media have been to broadcast and our role as centre-out content creators.
Widgets combine the two network effects - of production and distribution. The ones that work best allow you to mash-up, creating a personalised outcome. This of course makes you more interested in a) displaying on your own space b) sharing with your friends. In a) you co-created the content. in b) You are the distributor.
But widgets also offer the greatest new opportunities for the creative minds of the media industry. Every great widget starts as the cool implementation of an idea which serves a need. The best respond to the needs of niche communities. It is built to serve and the builders need a strong understanding of who it is they are serving.
Those in a position to understand those needs and to respond with creative and useful solutions stand to benefit. And those of us in specialist media would certainly like to think we're among that number. Of course, the brightest among us will turn to the communities we know to co-create the launching widget in the first place, I hope that's a given...
A media brand is a platform for a community with shared interests.
Focused on the interests of this global niche community, we should provide the tools to allow the co-creation and aggregation of content, products and services
Services are best delivered at the point they are needed – and that is always, always mobile!
The widget-related update?
Focused on the interests of this global niche community, we should provide the tools to allow the co-creation, aggregation AND DISTRIBUTION of content, products and services
Your thoughts, as always, very welcome. Please post below.
Regular participants in the conversation of this blog will know I'm an advocate of the idea of relevance over quality. I'm seeing example after example, lining up to make the point. The latest? Art. What is defined as great art is generally reflected (in the end) by its market value. And that's how a very few super-rich individuals select the art they hang in their homes. The rest of us... well there's a minority who like to think of themselves as in some way cultured, having a superior aesthetic eye... or who just plain follow the money (ie the mass media model, lowest common denominator... Claude Monet's Lillies if you will) have reproductions of 'great' (ie high market value) art peppering their homes.
Some prefer to buy originals. I like to if I can afford them.
But over-riding all considerations in my home is relevance.
All of the original art in my home is very relevant to me - collected on travels, as reminders of particular places or important moments in our lives - much like family photographs.
The 'art' may not have 'quality' as measured by market value, but its 'sentimental value' (ie its relevance to us) is much, much more important to us.
How does that play out in your home - and what do you think that means for our consumption of all 'content' types?
Fascinating moment in news history last night. I was watching the BBC1 TV 10pm news (which was frustrating and angering me in equal parts - but that's another story). While the various BBC Hughs interviewed each other and sat back smugly folding their arms, I was on facebook via mobile (got to pass the time some how...). Noticed a couple of status updates referring to the death of actor Heath Ledger. Five minutes later one of the BBC Hughs broke into his 'two-way' with another (donchyer just hate journos interviewing themselves?) to reveal the 'breaking news' that Heath Ledger had been found dead. Bear in mind that this is the BBC broadcasting live news as I watch it. And Facebook friends beat them via my mobile. Twitter was even faster (Dan Thornton tells me). It seems that not only are people plus social tools providing more relevant news to each other than the big broadcasters can, they are also capable of producing 'news' of equal quality - certainly if you believe 'being first' in news is all!
I was discussing video with a colleague this afternoon - and my fear that all too often our desire for editorial control leads it to becoming a kind of poor man's TV - a broadcast tool which makes it poor media rather than the rich media it gets lazily labelled (I posted about this unfortunate TV envy late last year.). This video, shot by Jeff Jarvis in April 07, makes the point rather well. It features Michael Rosenblum at the RTNDA conference. Nicely put Michael. Not the highest quality - but monumentally relevant - and that is very much the point. I'm not so sure about the $100,000 journos, but all those who seek to retain centralised control would do well to listen to the reference to ebay towards the end of this clip.
And you can comment on it - and respond with a video of your own (at least on youtube, where it's from).
Still, I'm waiting for a set of tools to make video truly rich. But in the meantime, handover control to the edge.
Once upon a time if you put together a nice little video (brim full of TV envy) of sufficient quality and (usually subversive) humour you'd get a nice little pass-on rate. I think of those old Ford Ka ads.
These were essentially broadcast. They relied on a different 'distribution model' (that'd be us then) than the 30-second slot, but that was all. And the marketing world slapped itself on the back. For we have invented pull... ish (at least in the sense that those who were amused by the ad would forward it to others who they thought would be amused, and along the way the sender would accrue some kudos for showing a side to his own sense of humour, and for being first (among his peers) with the gag.
And let's not discount that. It was a decent leap forward. But it was one with a one leg tied behind us. More a stuttering hop then.
They were a hop forward in another way too - they got closer to the true voice of the brand. Instead of a sanitised made-for-TV version of their voice, this one dared to speak something approximating the truth.
For example, a few years back one bike manufacturer showed an awesome video of one of its new bikes being thrashed through early morning city streets. It was great to watch - accompanied by banging music. But it was only for consumption within the exhibition it was being shown at (on a small screen on its own stand). It was kind of semi-public. I was the editor of motorcyclenews.com at the time. We thought it was great and wanted to show it on our site. The manufacturer daren't share it officially.
But in the hyperlinked world of the web, the truth will out. We found a site showing the video and linked to it. It didn't last long (the site got taken down pretty rapidly and this was a world pre the ubiquity of Youtube.)... but the video was out. The voice was heard. That video said what the people who worked for that manufacturer really thought about bikes and this bike in particular. And that was extremely refreshing. It carried the authentic voice of people passionate about two-wheels - about people who cared more about that truth than about PR, the risk of offending a handful, of being accused of inciting bad behaviour etc etc.
This is one of the things that good viral does. It does what is not allowed by the carefully constructed PR-riven world of brand 'management'. It subverts The Message, to reveal the true voice - the real conversation happening in an organisation. It closes the gap between those who craft and those who market.
Another example is rattling around the web right now. It isn't an 'advert' at all - but advertisers and marketing teams could learn an awful lot from it.
I'm thinking of this:
I've been sent a link to the clip above by two of my peers. That's pretty damn viral then. It's been viewed 1.9m times (as of Dec 19, 2007), it has hundreds (400+) comments on YouTube. It's been favourited 5000 times.
Outcome: When I saw it I thought... actually I'd rather like to a) buy an Eddie Izzard live DVD b) see Eddie Izzard doing live stand-up. And there may be nearly 2m more just like me.
But where's the hard sell? Where's the link to buy? Where's the professionally produced, slick high-production-values? Where's the TV envy? Where's the end credits with a url?
There are none of these. Is it more effective for it? It feels that way to me. It's made by a fan (there's even a helpful rumour doing the rounds that Eddie makes them himself - which would be great if it were true, because it would be an example of closing the gap between creator and marketing still further) - not a corporation aiming to make bucks out of Eddie.
Imagine the 'viral' ad that most agencies would have put together in a bid to achieve the same outcome? I don't think Lego or stop-motion would have been involved. Relevance over quality - comes up again and again...
So viral needs to tell the truth of a product/service... whatever, in the authentic voice of those who create it. Their passion should shape it. If Eddie didn't make this video a fan did - and that's as close as it gets to being part of 'Eddie Izzard Corp'.
The Izzard example illustrates another requirement of great viral. It's mashable. And that means you can create a personal outcome, as Chris Cunningham spoke about at Widgety Goodness. You get a version for yourself to co-create.
And since you create it, you will embrace it, it becomes relevant to you and your friends. And that relevance becomes more important than any amount of shine, spin (quality) you can put on it.
Trouble is, the Eddie case comes with some tough technical barriers to overcome... I have to save off the soundtrack, then go create my own video version, then upload to youtube et al, then share with my good buddies...
So here's an example that makes the point rather better, because it lowers the technical barriers very well (and rids itself of the TV envy in the process). I was pointed at this by David Armano at Logic + Emotion.
What we have here is a promo for Pampers in which you can make your kids the stars - and then who wouldn't want to share it with their nearest and dearest? And they'll have friends they'll want to share the idea with etc etc.
If given tools to create your own version of something you can create something which is relevant to you, and which you will embrace. And now that there's no space between us (thanks to the web) you can share your joy with your friends really fast.
So, here are the lessons I draw from these examples. If you spot more (or think I'm making assumptions that need challenging) please join the conversation by commenting.
1. Speak in an authentic voice (close the gap between creation and marketing) 2. Lose the TV envy (think relevance over quality) 3. Give people tools to make it their own (that which we create, we embrace) 4. Don't bother with urls, links or 'brand messages'. (We don't do spin) If people are interested they will search. Buy the keywords if you want to make it easier for them.
The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
