If The Medium Is The Message, What Is Toddlers & Tiaras Trying To Say?

I read an article in the Globe & Mail this morning about a St. Catherine's student who has started a facebook group to get the TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras removed. The basic premise of the show is following a group of small children go through their ups and downs of participating in kid pageants.

Having watched the show for context, I also found it offensive on a number of different levels the least of which is seeing a 4 year old in high heels, full make up a bikini shimming her stuff on stage. But TV being TV, my attitude has always been that I can just turn it off. If I don't like it, I won't watch it. I'm not big on censorship unless it constitutes hate which i don't believe is the case here.

But this is where the medium IMO plays a role. TV is a passive medium. I'm watching something that is edited, scripted and in general controlled. But what happens when that show has a website. And worse what happens when that website actually asks the audience - that's you and me - to participate ACTIVELY in judging these children.

Well that is exactly what is happening over at TLC's website. They have functionality where you and I can actually view and vote. In their words:

"You be the judge. Rate these pageant contestants"

Here's the problem. These aren't just any pageant contestants. These are children. Regardless of what I might think of the entire pageant industry, I don't think it's the same as you and I rating these children. And look at this photo...



Not one of these kids has made it past 5 out of 10. If the medium is the message, what do we think that the Toddlers & Tiara's website is trying to say?

Whether I like the show again, is besides the point. I don't believe in censorship but i think functionality like this goes way to far. These aren't adults who have consciously decided to be on American Idol. These are children.

What do you think?

Are CMO's Stuck In The Past? Or Are Online Marketers

A post by Knowledge@wharton asks the question

"If online marketing is the future, why are some CMO's stuck in the past?"

To help build their argument, they use the statistics that we see flying around the Web regarding the disproportionate spend of traditional TV advertising in relationship to online advertising. According to Wharton:

"Americans spend an average of 14 hours a week online and 14 hours watching TV. But marketers spend 22% of their advertising dollars on TV and only 6% online, according to data compiled and analyzed by Google."

Here's the issue. We continue to have these discussions in relationship to traditional marketing and advertising and traditional advertising buys. We still haven't changed our thinking to look at the media mind set of the customer as they interact with the various types of media.

What am I talking about? Peter (Munck) had a model (created almost ten years ago now) where he looked at all media from the customer's media mind set...



If we start to look at media this way, instead of offline vs. online, it changes the dynamic of how we utilize various media to engage our customers and how they in turn, utilize media to engage with us.

For instance, invasive media would include not only traditional mass advertising such as print, radio, TV and billboards but as well, include certain types of direct mail and online banner ads.

If you look at the Wharton article (and others), they are referring to PAID ad placement - what is invasive media.

However, the shift in the market place isn't from offline to online, it's really about a continuous shift away from solely invasive media to other media types. There are enough articles/books/individuals talking about the Participation Age to sink a ship. And YET...we seem to keep talking about this "new" age of marketing in "old" terms. Until we change OUR conversation, the Age of Conversation will end up comparing apples to oranges in a way that will be difficult for traditional marketers to understand. Not because as some articles suggest "they don't get it" but because half the time, I think WE don't.

Building new mental models (like the one Peter likes to use) help break us out of our collective old thinking and start to build the foundation to both create new networked marketing architectures as well as basis for new conversations with our clients. As the network becomes more pervasive, its usage as a differentiator becomes less and less relevant.

And while you're thinking about that, now start to look at all the various structures and business models traditional agencies have set up for their "online" business and why they continue to have so much trouble within the Agency construct seeing any wide spread success.

:)

If Content Is Not King, Then What Happens To The Kingdom?

For a recent consulting project I bumped into the brilliant Andrew Odlyzko's article Content is Not King.

I can't help but want to send the link to a few people over there at CBS (and a few other media companies as well) as they once again attempt to apply the mass broadcast model of content creation and dissemination (with advertising of course) to the phenomen of Web 2.0.

Ok so we know, consumers have become producers. But I think in the minds of the media companies, they have taken that very literally giving consumers the role of traditional producers and production companies. Consumers are now their content creation team while not controlled, certainly edited and filtered and of course, brought to you by product x, y and z.

What they are missing however, is the point. It isn't about content. Well, certainly it's not just about content. It's about new forms of communication and ones that use not only text, but pictures, icons, photographs, video etc. It is a new language that's empowered by digital.

Will media companies ever see it this way? I doubt it because if content is not king, then what exactly happens to their kingdoms?

Sadly, I never got to ask Andrew as the only conversation i was able to have was apologizing for being sick and my project deadlines were such that I was unable to engage him again. But I still wonder what he would have said about it. But my bet is that doubt he wouldn't have thought that CBS are on the right track.

Throwing The Digital Babies Out With The Media Bathwater

Online departments at major content providers appear to be getting the Ax...According to MediainCanada

"Claude Galipeau ended his brief tenure at Alliance Atlantis Communications on Friday, joining the exec-odus of new-media heads from CHUM, CTV, CanWest and Corus, which - in a wave of post-takeover belt-tightening - appear to be gutting their online departments"

One has to wonder what is going on? It reminds me a bit of when all the Interactive Divisions got merged into the Direct Marketing divisions at Agencies. Rather than well thought out strategies, it always appeared to me that these decisions were based on fear, reducing head count, as well as an inability to understand how to integrate new media into their companies overall business vision.

You can't just tack on new media to an org chart and expect it to be successful.

It isn't about a blog strategy or what new web 2.0ey social networking new thingymabob you can launch. It goes much deeper than that.

IMHO it more important to understand the impacts of the new networked media environment and customer and how that could RE-IMAGINE where you are going as a business. REINVENT how you interact with your customers. And RE-VISION who you are as a brand.

Until companies look at new media in those terms, they will continue to struggle and throw the digital babies out with the media bathwater.

User Generated Marital Conflict?

Anecdotally i have been hearing a number stories about the technology divide and how it is impacting relationships. What seems to be at issue is the divide between personal (and probably generational) comfort levels with transparency.

I might be fine putting up my pictures on the Web through ucaster, Flikr, Facebook etc. but are the people in my photos ok with that?

It's even causing marital strife with couples who have radically different ideas about privacy and what is or isn't considered public property.

Kinda makes you wish for the days when it was just about marrying outside of your faith and arguing over what your going to tell the kids when they grow up about God!

Imagining the Preamble For The Big Strategic Brainstorming For Every Media Company In America

I think it's going something like this:

"Team, this is an emergency meeting.

Our data and research group has come back and shown us the curve and basically our core audience will all be dead within 10 years. Advertisers are leaving us in droves. Our revenue is down.

Disney just bought Club Penguin...
That damn Facebook kid refuses to sell...
Murdoch got Myspace and is going to make the wall street journal online free...

We are here today to figure out our strategic next steps. Anyone got any ideas?

Yes Bob?"

"We could buy that Treehugger Site"

"Already been bought by Discovery Channel. Anyone else? Anyone? How about you Jane?"

" Um....I think we should invite that really techno kid, whatshisname, you know the summer student?"

“Great idea Jane. Ok, let’s reschedule this meeting until the kid can make it.”

Money Can't Buy You Community: Lesssons From Yahoo

I have complained for a long time now about what i call "Yahoothanization". What is it? It's what Yahoo does to perfectly good companies that they buy. They Yahoothanize them. Meaning, they attempt to force a whole bunch of Yahoo rules (the first of which starts with the old 'you must get a Yahoo ID') onto whatever community they have purchased.

And there in lies the problem. Yahoo thinks they have actually have purchased those communities.

These non-networked businesses who continue to have a top down command and control business approaches will keep running into the same issue until they get it. We only have to look at the transition of myspaces to Rupert's spaces to watch the phenomenon in action (Facebook anyone?)

Jeff Jarvis has a great post on the Yahoo subject and an even better quote:

"We debated for decades whether content or distribution was kind but it turns out that neither is. The community is the Kingdom."

So there you go. The only thing that is getting Yahoothanized these days is Yahoo but there is an important lesson here:

Technologies can be bought and sold, but communities can't.

PERIOD.

Letter To The Editor

My mom and I were discussing an article in the Globe and Mail the other day (yes she still gets a paper every morning) and at some point she said to me

"you know what, you should write a letter to the editor"

Letter to the editor? What's that?

It's funny that in her world blogging doesn't mean anything to her. She is 68 and the only blogs she reads are when i forward her something of note and then to her, it would be the same as getting any website url. It could be the Globe and Mail online or it could be Joe Schmo's blog. It pretty much looks the same to her.

So I laughed (with her, not at her - she's my mom after all) and said, yeah mom, those are called blog comments now.

Reminds me of when my daughter saw an old electric typewriter on the side of the road in a garbage pile and asked "what’s that mommy?"

Letter to the editor. Soon to be a thing of the past.

It's 1950 Again

Looks like in an effort to force people to watch TV ads, Garmin and Jay Leno are doing an in-show spot.

"...the shtick for the 30-second spot will have Jay Leno's announcer, John Melendez, appearing in a lab coat to discuss how Garmin devices can be the cure for "direction disorder," an ailment that prevents men from asking for directions."

Wow don't wanna miss that! (I'll let you know how it is ;) But just so we are clear, I draw the line on this blast from the past if it means that someone is going to expect me at some point to wear a poofy dress and look happy while holding a bottle of cleaning liquid as Wally and the Beav go past to cause trouble....

And Who Told You Writers Earn A Living?

What's with the entire 'monetization of blogging' conversation that continues to go around the Web like a rat on a wheel. I just don't get it.

I have read probably every book there is on writing (it was my own special way of procrastinating writing my novel). Almost all of them say the same thing:

1. If you want to write, put the book down and write (Doh....)
2. Don't quit your day job. Almost no writers make a living writing.

I mean even Margaret Atwood still takes Canada arts council grants. So why should blogging be different?

There will always be those that are at the top of their game, that have thousands of readers and a whole bunch of companies willing to pay them for speaking or consulting gigs.

But for most people, writing is about expressing oneself, and/or having an opinion. With blogging i would also add for me it's about connecting with people who I wouldn't have otherwise connected with.

And let’s face it, that is way more valuable than the .50 cents you make on Google
ads.

Still Enamored With TV

Peter called me into the TV room last night because it turned out that my cousin Phil's place (for those of you in Toronto, you probably know it - best damn BBQ - Phil's Original BBQ on College st)was on restaurant makeover.

Now what is it about TV that makes me go, "oh look, Phil and Gloria are on TV! Cool"

I saw this when i worked at the Agency all the time. I am still convinced one of the reasons there is so much client money pumped into TV commercials is that clients love to go on shoots. The sets are cool. Food services! Lights, Camera, Action!

Yep, we are still enamored with TV. Well, at least a little bit.

:)

Disagreeing with Wallstrippers on Why CBS Bought Wallstrip - Sorta

So how stupid am I to disagree with the very people who KNOW why CBS bought them but heck, it's my blog so here I go.

In his posting called "The Magic Is In The Process" Rogers Ehrenberg (who was on their board) says that they CBS bought them:

"to get this know-how and to expand it beyond Wallstrip into a provider of leading-edge web video content." (ok I am not disagreeing with this part....in agreement here...) and he points to one article (NYTimes) and two blog posting, Fred Wilson (investor) and VC Ratings (Joshua Jaffe VC) which all talk about how CBS bought Wallstrip for the technology and production know how. (here's where I am going to disagree....sorta)

Everyone seems to want to focus in on the production process for Wallstrip and I certainly get that - figuring out how to do it for less, mastering the marketing of Wallstrip brilliant. But the first time I saw Wallstrip I thought, that smart fucker Howard - look at that...and it wasn't about the production process or even the talent. It was the style. Wallstrip was different than any of the video blogs I had seen because they created more of a micro-TV show. And over time, the actual style of Wallstrip became its brand the same way that David E. Kelly's shows became his brand.

So IMHO, CBS didn't buy only the technology or the production process, what they bought was the Wallstrip BRAND (not content - brand)! And like any good media brand, they are going to now extend it to a bunch of different micro-TV shows that will likely be different than Wallstrip but someone feel like the same franchise.

This isn't about old media meets new. It's about smart media companies getting their business asses in gear and looking out past their quarterly results to build something that will be meaningful for their audiences in the future.

Whew. I am done now. I feel better.

Random Acts of Hopscotch

What a great story out of Ottawa.

"Last Thursday, about a dozen children grabbed some chalk and started drawing hopscotch squares that eventually covered four city blocks. One neighbour called to complain about "graffiti" on the street, however, and the city responded by sending in a truck to hose it down."

In solidarity with the kids, chalk messages started to appear all over the city some saying "Play. Live. Dance. Hopscotch". Apparently, one group actually organized in the cover of night, spanning for blocks with a giant hopscotch and a variety of messages that pointed eventually to the stairs of city hall.

Talk about user generated media - now moving from the Web to public spaces. I think we need to start a national movement and in the words of one chalk artist:

"be active on your lunch break, come hopscotch"

An 11 Year Old Questions The Profitability Of Newspapers

Over the holidays I was helping my 11 year old daughter (let's call her CC) with a school project. Her class (she lives in Greece right now) was creating an English newspaper. Since CC is the only native English speaker, she decided to become editor and chief (clearly the apple doesn't fall very far....). She got the kids to all write articles, she aggregated content from her American Girl and National Geographic kids magazines, and she and i created a bunch of Sudukos and crossword puzzles from the net.

In the end, we had 5 pages back and front. The we had to photo copy them which we did at the local Staples for about 7cents a copy costing us 70cents an issue. We made 20 issues for a total of $14 and then of course god love Canada, we had our 14% tax on top for a grand total of $15.96.

CC looks at me dismayed -

"but Mommy, I was going to sell the papers for .50 Euro a paper (that's basically .70 cents Cnd). That means if I have to pay you, I won't have any money left over! And I told the class that we were going to split the money! Why would anyone make a newspaper? This is stupid!"

And now for your reading pleasure linked to from Fading to Black blog, David Letterman's Top 10 List On How You Know Your Newspapers In Trouble

Ubiquitous Marketing

Marketing Daily had an article this morning called Mobile The Future Of Digital Marketing.

“Mobile search is where the future is,” Verklin said, explaining that the way consumers “watch” media is changing dramatically. “Mobile devices are the new definition of watch. No one ‘owns’ mobile today. It’s the third screen. You are perfectly positioned to refocus on mobile.”

This isn't about mobile marketing. This isn't about the third screen or the fourth screen, the sixth sense or mobile vs. stationary, online vs. offline, TV on the Web or Web on your TV. It's all just digital.

The network is everywhere all the time. How we access it will be through a myriad of devices and ways that we can only conceive of now.

Thinking in terms of mobile marketing is again a passive mass media mind-set that says, we broadcast our messages to you who receive them now on your cell phone.

Versus you are the network and if you want, you self-select through any means that you deem appropriate (today being set top box, gaming box, computer, mobile device etc.) to access the content that I have provided you because you believe that there is a value exchange you are willing to tolerate.

Ubiquitous networked marketing; don’t think mobile, think digital.

Are Newspaper Blogs More Formal?

I hadn't been to Mathew Ingram's postings on the Globe and Mail website in a while.

I think its a bit odd, because I go to his blog all the time, and I read his column in the paper version on Saturdays (I am addicted to G&M Saturday paper) but really, I almost rarely read geekwatch online.

What's weird is that the two feel really different to me. The comments on the G&M site seem to be somehow more formal and less conversational. Maybe I am making this up (I do that sometimes) but somehow there seems to be a difference. It's almost like one is in Mathew's living room and one is a planned event that you have to get dressed up for.

Loss of Interest or Just Loss of Time?

CBC had a media analyst on the current this morning who has done some research that says people still LOVE their traditional media (print, radio, TV, magazines).

Peter made a great observation to me that many people have the tendency to believe that the decline in traditional media has to do with a loss of interest. What we got to talking about is the fact that maybe it's not about interest but has much more to do with loss of time.

Maybe technology is the media equivalent of having a child. It’s not that you don’t still enjoy and want to do the activities you did before birth, it’s just that you simply don’t have the hours in the day to fit it all in.

With so many choices and the ever-increasing numbers of media types and technologies that support them, what we want to do, and what we are able to accomplish are two completely different things.

Over 70% Of All Digital Content To Be User Generated By 2010

According to a new IDC study,

"...Nearly 70% of the digital universe will be generated by individuals by 2010, and that most of this content will be facilitated by an organization along the way..."

and furthermore:

"This ever-growing mass of information will put a strain on the IT infrastructure and organizations will need to employ ever-more sophisticated techniques to transport, store, monitor, secure and replicate the additional information that is being generated every day."

Does Technology Solve Real Problems Or Just Manufacture Need?

Professor Darin Barney will be speaking at U of T in a lecture called "One Nation Under Google: Citizenship in the Technological Republic". Dr. Barney has many interesting ideas and thoughts. Back in an interview in 2003, he had this quote:

"In reality, technologies tend to create more needs than they address, and to manufacture the very problems they stand ready to solve. I think of cell phones in this regard. Was the ability to engage in phone conversation while riding the bus really a pressing social need prior to the arrival of the cellular phone, or did our perception of that as a need arise after this technology became widely available? Was the fact that everybody wasn't always accessible, everywhere, via personal communication technology a problem before the mobile phone, or did the expectation of constant accessibility arise in light of increased use of mobile phones and e-mail?"

It's interesting because I most recently had this conversation about instant messenger. If I were pitching IM back in the day, what problem exactly did it solve? None I would suggest. What it did was present an opportunity and expanded the way we connect to each other. It fulfilled a 'human need' in a way that we couldn’t really conceive of it before it existed. And maybe to Dr. Barney's point, it went further and actually created that need in the first place.

Anyway, his lecture on technology and democracy should be thought provoking as well. Tickets are sold out but apparently if you show up chances are you will get in to hear it.

Flickr Gets Yahoo-thanised

As of March 15th, Flickr users now have to get a Yahoo ID to sign-in. I wish these transitions weren't so bloody painful. The problems when Rogers became Rogers Yahoo was unbelievable from a users point of view and to some extent you have to wonder at the overall value to the companies that force these type of transitions. After all, with such stiff competition in the user generated content business, early passionate users to Flickr are likely going to be so annoyed that the cost/benefit doesn't seem to make sense.

It's the conflict of business goals and customer goals. The more things change the more they stay the same, even in the digital world.