Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Why Networked Media Is Like The British Weather

Like many independent web workers, I sometimes find it tricky when people ask me what I do professionally. The day-to-day reality is that I research and analyse digital trends that I think are interesting and help like-minded clients work out if and how they are relevant. However, people don't always find that helpful. So sometimes I say that I work with marketeers and brands that feel overwhelmed by technology. Which, I suspect, can sound patronising. But it shouldn't. Feeling overwhelmed is a perfectly understandable reaction as, rather like the rain in the UK at the moment, technological change can seem unrelenting, which for many people is disturbing. I recall a session I ran earlier this year when an executive told me she was worried that the pace of digital change was eventually going to make her redundant. Not because her job was going to disappear but, despite being a smart, accomplished individual she felt she didn't have the time to keep up with the latest bits and bytes. Once again, this is understandable and the individual in question is certainly...

Online TV Comes Of Age In The UK - So What?

John Lewis, the UK department store chain, has created a very cute Christmas TV ad that continues its tactic of playing on people's heart strings to rise above the yuletide shopping onslaught.  My attention was drawn to the commercial by a Telegraph journalist I follow on Twitter who added that even his hardened hack colleagues had been moved to tears.  How could I not take a peek?  So over I went to YouTube to watch the ad (two hundred and fifty thousand views and climbing) and to see if I could pass the dry lacriminal test.  (I couldn’t, no one can).  @hwallop also noted that the first showing of the ad would be on the following Saturday night during X-Factor, and indeed I glimpsed it for a nanosecond as I steamed through one of the show’s giant ad breaks at 60x normal speed.  Now I recognise that my own media consumption habits aren’t a perfect microcosm for the country at large.  Not everyone will be guided by Twitter to the degree that I am.  However, I am a John Lewis customer (who isn’t?) and I suspect that as Web TV grows in the UK, my own experience of the ad will become more normal, not less.  Web TV I hear you cry!?  But YouTube isn’t Web TV.  It’s YouTube - where dogs skateboard and babies giggle.  Well not anymore it isn't.  Sharp-eyed VC Mark Suster spotted that...

Software Is Eating TV

In August of this year, Marc Andreessen, the man who built the first commercial web browser, wrote that, ‘software is eating the world.'  Yet, he noted, companies continue to underestimate the impact modern technology is having on their markets.  Andreessen suggested this myopia might be down to bad memories and burnt fingers following the dotcom boom and bust, when many outlandish promises about the future were made and broken. Additionally, he cited a lack of appreciation about the speed of change that continues to take place around us and the subsequent dramatic shifts in the landscape for companies, brands and organisations. For instance, Andreeseen believes the rapid uptake of smartphones that's driving global access to the web will create vast online markets of five billion people. Furthermore, reaching these giant markets is becoming easier as the burgeoning capacity and efficiency of cloud computing continues to drive down the cost of running web services.  ‘Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming’, advises Andreessen who is now one of the world’s most influential technology investors.  It strikes me that his comments accurately capture the current mindset of...

The Marketing Industry's Silos Are Its Bunkers

Recently I met someone who described their specialism as Twitter strategy. Now while I wish the individual in question the best of luck with their offering I also thought it was a small example of the silo-mentality that is hardwired into the marketing business. One that, in my humble opinion, is taking the industry in the opposite direction to a world that is becoming increasingly intertwined. Everything that has occurred in the world of technology and marketing over the last five years will play out over the next twenty. In short, all media will become networked in the same way that all PCs were brought onto a single network by the Internet and then the web. On the supply-side change is being driven by powerful forces such as Moore’s Law and rapidly improving connectivity, the two mega-trends that between them are building the much-discussed cloud, into which all media will eventually be drawn. On the demand-side the growth of smartphones, tablets, connected TVs and other groovyware is providing the complementary lifestyle changes in people’s behaviour. The result is an increasingly sophisticated media ecosystem of which brands will remain a key aspect, providing people with signposts and trusted offerings – just as they always have. The overarching characteristic of this ecosystem is...

What's The New Normal For Big Brands?

What's the ‘New Normal’ for global brands?  By which I mean that following the collapse of global finance, the ensuing reshuffle of the world’s powerhouse economies and rapid growth of vast technological platforms, what do global brands care about and to which companies and sectors are they turning for assistance? I keep returning to three thoughts. Firstly, that corporations and brand-owners’ aims haven’t really changed a great deal. They want the same business outcomes, such as awareness, sales, loyalty and product differentiation, that create and support Mega-Brands and the shareholder dividends that follow. Secondly, media and marketing remains in the throes of huge waves of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter alluringly called ‘creative destruction’; the painful process by which one economic order is gradually replaced by another.  In the context of media and marketing, creative destruction has come in the form of digital IP technology breaking open the barriers between previously separate industries to create a single global platform upon which vast new networked media oceans surge.  Finally, most global corporates have been quietly shifting their investments into fast-growing markets for years. Now, as growth falters in Europe and the US, these booming economies seem to promise a golden future. Many such as Brazil, India, China and Indonesia see the creative destruction of technology, media and telecomms as a welcome opportunity. They invest enthusiastically in new...  

Google TV Goes Through The Looking Glass

The intriguing battle between Silicon Valley and Hollywood shows no signs of abating. This year Google offered the US TV Networks an olive branch with its 'Smart TV' only to be brutally rejected in recent days like just-another-starlet. However, at some point the proceedings reached a strange Alice-like point. While Google has built its own Web-On-The-TV without any TV content in the shape of Google TV, the US TV networks have built their own TV-On The-Web without any web content in the shape of Hulu. Confused? Don't worry - you aren't alone.  In fact it only makes sense when you realise that many of the ongoing developments, as the world reorganises itself from broadcast to networked media, are best viewed through Alice's Looking-Glass - where the standard rules don't apply. Just think back a few years to when the music industry was offered an apparent refuge by Steve ‘Brighter, Whiter & Lighter’ Jobs, away from those horrible ‘pirates’ (aka customers who just will not stop enjoying your products) on his lovely new, shiny and oh so secure iTunes store.  Only to discover that they had accidentally relinquished control of their industry to Apple. Oops. Now in the normal world handing over your business to a competitor who uses your generosity to unbundle your product, slash your profit margins, and in doing so transform themselves into a world-beating powerhouse, could seem like a strategically bad-hair day. However, in the topsy-turvy world of networked media, this was actually an improvement on what had gone before.  Previously, the newspaper industry gave over its house keys to Google without even noticing. All that was required was to look the other way and pretend the digital revolution wasn’t *actually* happening, allowing Messrs Page & Brin to open a global news agent to which they, and only they, had the keys.   So, while the music industry suffered badly at the hands of Silicon Valley, they did slightly better than their publishing bretheren.  And, in turn, the TV execs have done slightly better than...

How Do You Value Content?

When Channel 4's boss, Andy Duncan, writes in the FT, ‘The future must be about maximising the value of our content,’ he undoubtedly speaks for media executives around the planet.  So what’s the problem?  Why has the value of content suddenly become so newsworthy?  The answer lies in the media ratings industry and the challenges it faces from the web and digital technology.  Ratings in traditional media are vital as they allow the commercial world to work out what content they should be backing with their marketing bucks.  For example Nielsen's Television Ratings, the mother of all such services, which has reported on the TV viewing habits of 9,000 American households for more than sixty years, determines the destiny of $25bn of advertisers' cash annually.  Here in the UK the same job is done by BARB, which monitors televisual preferences in 5,100 homes.  Both are centralised systems that extrapolate trends from a relatively small group of individuals and use them to create a commercial marketplace, in which C4 and others have been able to operate successfully for many years.  However, as Duncan’s quote suggests, this marketplace is now under pressure because advertisers question the value of ratings services which have struggled to keep up with the web.  Or as one grand media fromage memorably told me: 'We know the bike is broken but it's the only one we've got.'  The difficulties arise because the concept of ‘ratings’ is very different online.  The goal is still to judge the value of content but the similarities stop there.  Online ratings services normally refer to...

Who Needs A Label?

The music industry remains fascinating from a marketing perspective as the distribution networks driven by its fans become increasingly influential and start to supercede the structures of the Big Labels.  This interview at TorrentFreak with a young musician gives a great flavour of what radical change looks like from the Y-Gen perspective.  “'Labels will complain and sue their very core audience just to make a dollar. I can’t blame them, it’s the way they’ve built their company. Change scares them, especially when they don’t control it. I honestly believe that I wouldn’t be a musician today if Napster hadn’t appeared. I think Napster fostered the incredible current musical culture and nobody gives them credit for it. I find it very hard for an upcoming artist to get any exposure without being willing to promote their music on p2p networks.'  The clash between artist and labels, and the ever increasing piracy statistics are forcing the big labels to rethink their business models. Nowadays, BitTorrent has the power to promote artists based on their music, not on the advertising budget. It is hard to deny that the music labels are in a crisis, however, music itself is more alive than ever before."  As Doc Searls says, 'in networked economies the demand side supplies itself'.

People Care About Markets, Not Industries

No one cares about the music industry.  But they really care about music, musicians - and the music marketplace.  They care about songs, singers, bands, DJs, gigs, clubs, forums, recommendations, discussion boards, MySpace, specialist dealers and obscure collectors.  And now the web lets people organise these things into the marketplace they've always wanted.  Which looks something like - free music supported by live gigs, merchandise and good quality recordings.  The music business (RIP) lost sight of the industry vs marketplace distinction along time ago.  After years of trying to protect their cathedrals, they ended up outsourcing the headache to Steve Jobs.  Who made a mint by ignoring the industrialists and rebuilding a lighter-whiter-brighter marketplace.  Now TV is trying to avoid the same fate of being stuck behind stone walls, throwing boiling oil at its customers.  TV's smart kids know no one gives a hoot about their industry.  But they do care about great entertainment, amazing actors, sensitive scriptwriting, powerful plots, celebrity glitz and inspiring drama.  In fact, they care so much that given the opportunity they want to get involved.  Just look at the success of the L-Word fanisode and LG15 (now EQAL), creators of the hits Lonely Girl and Kate Modern.  Both are examples of smart operators turning their backs on the industry, looking out into the marketplace (aka the bazaar) and reacting to what they observe.  But it's not all small studios hustling webisode craziness.  The Big Daddy of social networks - MySpace - has its own TV channel and just listen to its VP, Jason Kirk describe their approach: "We’re trying to decide what makes sense for our community. The video is often the catalyst, but it’s about how does it play into the community."  Or Amanda Goodfried, LG15 producer: 'The show is more than just a video series, it’s a universe, a full experience where viewers can become directly involved in the character’s lives.'  No industrial sentiment there.

"We Need To Protect The Music"

I don't have the mental capacity to unravel the levels of irony currently unfolding in the music business.  Explaining the strategy behind Universal using DRM-free music to create a new market that will challenge the omnipotent iPod is like Sudoku for marketeers.  However, the trigger is clear.  This year, 22 percent of all music sold in the US will move through iTunes.  Having spent gazillions on lawyers fees trying - and failing - to prevent such a DRM-free market being created, it's a remarkable twist in this story.  But in this fascinating Wired article we can understand that myopia created by quarterly reporting and reliance on the huge profit margins of previous distribution systems (ie CDs) were equally culpable in the industry's current desperate situation.  "We need to protect the music. I know that," says Universal Music Group CEO, Doug Morris.  Don't worry Doug, 'the music' is going to be fine.  When you gave it all to Steve Jobs he put it in his safe.  Now he only lets people use it if they pay him.