quarterlife crisis?

“Quarterlife,” the first Web-based drama to air on network television, has been canceled by NBC after a dismally rated first episode but will move to sister cable channel Bravo, people close to the show said on Thursday.

The highly touted online series about a group of young artists bombed in its NBC debut on Tuesday night, drawing the network’s lowest ratings and smallest audience for that time slot in at least 20 years, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Ouch.
Let’s be honest - ‘quarterlife’ was doomed from the start.  It was designed for MySpace, to be distributed on the web, but it ended up on television instead.  The subject matter was specific to the web.  The production style was suited for online.  Everything that Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the Emmy-winning producers of “thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life” had put together was geared towards an audience of 20-somethings who get their content primarily (if not entirely) online.

So why did NBC buy the program and put it on TV?  My guess is because they thought they could make more money with advertisers, get a larger viewing audience to tune in, instead of log on.  They were wrong.
There is an audience out there that wants to see a well produced drama about 20-somethings.  Some are still watching television regularly, and maybe NBC will find success putting ‘quarterlife’ on one of its more targeted cable channels (though I would guess not in this case).  You see, the majority have found other ways to get their entertainment: through the web, on their mobile devices like cell phones and iPods, and within social networks (which, while online, have a whole different way of operating).
NBC should have known that, the evidence of this shift in how people get and share information is not hard to find.  I think they did know, and they chose to ignore it.
TV networks haven’t found a good reason to break their old habits and old models.  They still make plenty of money doing things the wrong way.  And they get pressure from advertisers, who don’t understand that times have changed either, to keep doing things the same way they always have.  Networks like NBC, and their advertisers, will probably make money this way, the wrong way, for a few more years.  But, the audience is changing and their (our) expectations have changed dramatically.  The networks, and their advertisers, must radically change their activities and recognize that a new world requires a new way of operating.  Until they do, you will see them fall flat on their faces time after time, just as they did in the case of ‘quarterlife.’
Stay tuned, I guess…

Superbowl Weekend Reading

(I will be part of a team of experts organized by the Boston Ad Club offering thoughts on the Superbowl advertising this weekend.  Some of our comments will be posted on the Boston Ad Club’s Superbowl Advertising Blog.  This post also appears there).

The weekend of the big game has finally arrived!  The Ad Club has pulled together a crack team of advertising and marketing experts to offer comments on the advertising that will play on Super Sunday.  We are making final preparations, reviewing our play book, stretching out, etc.  What’s my role?  I will offer insights and thoughts into the use of new media in relation to the advertising. 

To help set the tone for my part of the conversation, I have pulled together a quick list of articles from the past two weeks about the role that New Media will play in this giant advertising spectacle.  Here is a little weekend reading for you:

New York Times: Colts and Bears and Kevin Federline (February 2, 2007) 

Key excerpt: “Now, thanks to the Internet, Super Bowl commercials are like gifts that Madison Avenue tries to keep on giving. As soon as the game ends, video clips of the spots are posted online, on the Web sites of sponsors like fedex.com; the networks that broadcast the game like cbs.sportsline.com; and Internet media companies, among them ifilm.com, msn.foxsports.com, sports.aol.com and youtube.com.”

ClickZ: A Level Playing Field for Superbowl Ads (February 2, 2007)

Key excerpt: “This year, advertisers buying spots during Super Bowl XLI are frequently posting those ads online before they’re broadcast to try and create buzz. And one group of self-proclaimed “Web 2.0″ companies has formed to create spots that ride the wave of Super Bowl advertising — without actually advertising in the Super Bowl.  Knowing they couldn’t afford a standard Super Bowl ad, six start-up firms challenged each other to come up with Super Bowl-style :30 spots and upload them to a YouTube channel at SuperDotComAds XLI.”

iMedia Connection: Make Sure Your Website is Ready! (February 1, 2007)

Key excerpt: “Almost one third (30 percent) [of people surveyed] will visit the company’s website, and that same number (31 percent) will look for the ad online to view again. Marketers should make it easy for these people to find the ad by giving it a prominent position on their corporate website homepage. Without providing this kind of easy access to the advertisement, marketers will risk losing visitors to those sites clearly dedicated to Super Bowl advertising, such as Google Video or AOL. Along with providing access to the TV ad, these online destinations also provide message boards, voting and other community features.”

AdWeek: Snickers to Extend 30 Second Spot Online (January 30, 2007)

Key excerpt: “Masterfoods plans to extend the life of its 30-second Snickers Super Bowl spot via a microsite that will feature player reactions to the commercial and alternate endings. Up to three such endings will be posted, along with the version that will run during the game…. Masterfoods declined to provide the full spot before the game but a clip of the first five seconds is viewable on the microsite, www.SnickersSatisfies.com, which went live today.”

Washington Post: $2 Million Airtime, $13 Ad (January 31, 2007)

Key excerpt: “The YouTube Effect has crept into television’s mightiest showcase for advertising: the Super Bowl. For the first time, viewers of the biggest football game of the year, Sunday’s Super Bowl XLI on CBS between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears, will see at least four ads that were created by amateurs, rather than by high-end ad agencies. For advertisers, consumer-created content is a cost-savings bonanza. Advertisers are paying more than $2.6 million for the most expensive 30-second spot in this year’s Super Bowl, up from $2.5 million last year. Just to produce a top-level 30-second ad can easily cost more than $1 million. A commercial produced by an amateur, by comparison, can be had for the price of a plane ticket and a trip to the game for the winner and some post-production cleanup for the ad itself.  For the ad creators, it’s a shot at the big time and an end run around traditional barriers to appearing on advertising’s biggest stage. Indeed, it could be a career starter — more than 90 million viewers are expected to tune in to the Super Bowl.”

And a few more…

Ad Age: Measuing Bowl ROI?  Good Luck (January 29, 2007)

Survey: Sports Marketers Choose New Media Over Superbowl Advertising (January 29, 2007)

ClickZ: Very Different Superbowl Predictions (January 26, 2007)

MarketWatch: Moving the ball, beyond the Super Bowl broadcast (January 29, 2007)

Wall Street Journal: In Web Polls of Super Bowl Ads, Now A Word From the Sponsor’s Sponsor (January 29, 2007)

These are just a sampling of the articles that are out there.  But, I think you get a sense that the media is thinking the use of new media may just be the biggest story around the Superbowl advertising bonanza this year.

What are you thinking?

- By Brian Reich.  Brian is the Director of New Media for Cone Inc.

I want XM and Sirius to merge

I really want XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio to merge. 

Why?  I want to hear Dave Niehaus, the best color man in baseball, call Mariners games for me every night.  I want live happily in Boston and know how my Seahawks and Sonics are playing without stalking the crawl on the bottom of ESPN2 each night.  I want to follow NASCAR without having to sit in front of my television for six hours on a Sunday.  Its not just about sports though, I want to hear what Oprah and her friends have to say about eating healthy and decorating my house.  I want to get public radio coverage from around the country without having to sit by my computer and stream it.  I could go on.

All that is available to me, of course, but only if I subscribe to both XM and Sirius.  I have come close to choosing before.  I received Sirius as a Christmas present two years ago and never activated it - mostly because because the football season was already winding down and I didn’t want to wait until next season to start getting full value out of my subscription.  I have gotten all the way to the checkout screen on the XM Satellite Radio website three times in the last few months, in anticipation of another exciting baseball season, only to bail out in hopes that the rumors of a merger will soon come true. 

If XM and Sirius merged, I could buy one good piece of hardware and one subscription and get everything I wanted.  I would pay good money for it.   I would enjoy it thoroughly.  I don’t think I would be alone.

Simply put, I don’t think my desire to hear a variety of different types of programming from one source is unreasonable.  And I think it is well past time when the two satellite radio giants, and the government, got in line with my thinking.

Joe Nocera writes in the New York Times today (Times Select subscription required) about the possible merger between XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.  While most of his column is about the regulatory aspects of the proposed deal and whether the FCC would support the creation of a single satellite radio giant, he does get to the heart of the matter - and seems to be in agreement with me.

[The two companies] also compete, of course, for content. Most famously, Sirius has Howard Stern, who signed a $500 million five-year deal with the company and moved his shtick to satellite radio at the beginning of last year. (Last week, the company announced that Mr. Stern had earned an $82 million bonus, claiming that he brought in far more revenue than he cost the company.) XM has an Oprah Winfrey station. Sirius has professional football and has pried Nascar away from XM. XM has Major League Baseball — and took the National Hockey League away from Sirius. Both have loads of news and talk and music channels, but XM’s channels tend to be more eclectic than Sirius’s.

On the face of it, this all sounds terrific for consumers. “Choice is always a good thing,” said Ryan Saghir, who blogs about satellite radio at Orbitcast.com — and opposes the idea of a merger. But it is not quite as terrific as it sounds. For one thing, what if you are a fan of both baseball and football? What kind of choice is it to have to decide between them? Or what if you like both Howard Stern and Oprah? (Well, O.K., that’s not a good example.) It is hard to think of another technology that forces subscribers to make that kind of choice.

Joe Nocera wants to listen to baseball and football on the same device, and the same subscription, as well.  His column sounds like a desperate plea from a radio junkie like me to make it happen.  Hey, Sirius and XM… hey, FCC… if you won’t listen to me, will you listen to Joe Nocera?

I can understand why the FCC might be nervous about giving the green light for a merger of this size.  But with appropriate monitoring and regulation - to ensure that a merger betwen XM and Sirius wouldn’t drive prices for consumers out of proporition with the market (something Nocera seems to argue isn’t likely because of the continued influence of free radio) - the potential benefits to consumers far outweighs the risks.  And I can understand why XM and Sirius are both believers in their product so much that they would rather compete to the death than cede control of their operation to their arch rival.  But really, would you all think about the consumer for a moment?

Rather than forcing customers to choose betwen services (a fact that I believe is actually driving down interest in satellite radio, and probably radio in general), the FCC could bless the creation of something that would provide a far better radio product than what is available today.  XM and Sirius could create the ultimate radio programming center, pitting their efforts against folks like Clear Channel who have sucked all the feeling out of radio in their quest to dominate the airwaves everywhere.  The merger would force traditional radio stations to compete with better programming and an alternative business model (advertising instead of subscription — a mix which I think is totally possible if you do it right).  And, best of all, I wouldn’t have to live without access to the programming I want because I find it unreasonable to have to buy/subscribe to two services instead of one.

Please FCC?  Please XM and Sirius?  Do it for Joe Nocera!  Do it for me!

The Future of Newspapers

I have been thinking a lot about the future of newspapers lately. 

The topic is not a new one - the various threats to print newspapers have been debated publicly in media and technology circles for several years now (and probably for quite some time out of the public’s view).  Despite numerous articles, conventions, discussions and predictions, I don’t think that much has been decided or even made more clear in that time.  I certainly have more questions than answers.  I don’t think anybody really knows what is going to happen.

A full discussion of the future of newspapers would take up more than one post, and would need to include people with far greater knowledge and perspective on the subject than I have to offer.  That never stops me from offering my opinion though.  And while I will try to organize my thoughts more clearly in the future, and invite friends and colleagues who work in the newspaper business to weigh in, for now I just I wanted to share a couple of recent articles about this debate that I thought were really interesting.

First, The Week magazine, writes about The Decline of the American Newspaper.  The article is a well organized summary of the current state of newspapers - with a little bit of editorial perspective to round things out.  For someone who is new to this debate, or just needs a refresher, the article is organized around seven key questions about the newspaper industry.  The questions include:

1. Why are newspapers in deep trouble? 
2. Where did the readers go? 
3. What’s the problem? 
4. What is the newspaper doing about all this? 
5. Is that strategy succeeding? 
6. So are newspapers going broke? 
7. Can anything be done?

For me, the future of newspapers has to include some localization of content and expertise.  I am an avid newspaper reader and nothing bothers me more than the AP-ification of the world’s information, when all the articles pull from the same sources and not a single bit of additional perspective is added.  Don’t get me wrong, the AP provides a valuable service and I use it regularly to keep track of events happening around the globe.  But I don’t consider that to be the true value that newspapers can provide.  According to The Week, I’m not alone in thinking this:

Publishers are experimenting with generating several versions of the paper to target various market segments, such as young people. Some may start giving away their papers free, relying entirely on advertising revenue. One school of thought is that newspapers should become “hyper-local,” focusing intensely on community news not available on the Web or TV. But most industry experts believe that the era of print newspapers is nearing its end. Newspapers, says media analyst Ken Marlin, “have to either adapt to the new economics, or die.”

Next up is “A modest proposal for reinventing newspapers for the digital age” by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic Monthly.  The article begins with an overview of, EPIC 2014 (now apparently updated to EPIC 2015) an online movie that predicts the future of the media that results from technological innovation (or assimilation as the case may be) and continues through a discussion of the various models that newspapers might try to integrate to become profitable.  Hirschorn settles on this recommendation/thought:

The current Web-publishing model that newspapers are using isn’t likely to become financially viable anytime soon. With few exceptions, the media businesses thriving on the Web either are low-cost blog-like efforts or follow a many-to-many model, in which communities create, share, and consume content. Publishing an article on the Web gets you one click; getting your users to write the article for you gets you a thousand clicks, and costs less to boot. In other words, turning your users into contributors increases their engagement with your site—each click is, after all, also an “ad impression”—while simultaneously generating more content that you in turn can sell to advertisers.

Now we’re talking!

Last on the article list for this post is Michael Wolff’s Billionaires and Broasheets in this month’s Vanity Fair, a look at the recent push by various moguls to buy into the print newspaper business.  Wolff alludes to most of the reasons I can imagine a billionaire would want to buy a newspaper - boredom (as might be the case with Jack Welch who is rumored to be interested in buying the Globe), frustration with the perspectives of the editorial board on an issue that is close to them personally (as is the case with Hank Greenberg, who is rumored to be interested in buying the New York Times), or maybe even ego (as is the case with Ron Burkle and Eli Broad, who are rumored to be interested in the LA Times and who probably think their investment and management savvy might be able to reshape the media biz).  For what its worth, Wolff’s contribution to the debate is summarized at the end of his article as follows:

Of course, the Internet is a bitch. On the other hand, the Internet is an inefficient way for a big man to throw his weight around. A newspaper really is the much more effective bully pulpit.

What’s more, given a host of new papers—The Daily Geffen, The Welch Globe, The Greenberg Times, The Broad Journal, The Burkle Shopper—freed from the deadening template of the people who theoretically know how to run newspapers, maybe the people who know nothing at all about newspapers will stumble onto something that makes them shout and sing (Eli Broad recently offered that it might be a good idea if the L.A. Times had more pictures of donors at charity events … well … maybe).

Anyway, now is not the time to worry about the unknown. The unknown is the only hope. Make the deal.

I don’t know yet what the future of media looks like - I’m working on figuring that out right now.  I don’t believe that the demise of newspapers will come any time soon, and I don’t see that takeover of journalism by faceless and emotionless technology (as is suggested by EPIC) will be realized any sooner.  I know that profitability is the chief concern of any business, and as long as journalism is considered a business (instead of say an art, or a public service) then groups like the New York Times and the Tribune Company will look for ways to monetize their coverage of world events.  My hope is that someone in the middle of this debate will realize that one of, if not the primary value, that newspapers have always offered to the public is editorial perspective and journalistic excellence — a way to help all of us who consume news on a mass scale to understand what is relevant, important, and why.  That seems to have gotten lost in this debate, and in our news industry today as a whole, and needs to return to both.

Marketing Around Moms

What does it say about our marketing culture when the most effective way to sell… well, anything… is to manipulate kids into pressuring their parents to make puchases they don’t feel comfortable with?  That is the underlying question in two recent articles I read, and now can’t stop thinking about.

The December 24, 2006 issue of New York Times Sunday Magazine featured a story by Peggy Orenstein, “What’s Wrong with Cinderalla?” (Times Select Subscription required), about the selling of the ‘princess culture’, most notably by companies like Disney and Mattel, who produces Barbie.  The December 5, 2006 issue of the New Yorker featured a story by Margaret Talbot, “Little Hotties,” (with thanks to the New America Foundation for posting a full version), about the growing rivalry between Mattel and M.G.A. Entertainment, a small toy company in Southern California that sells the Bratz dolls.

The articles come from very different perspectives - Orenstein is a feminist, while Talbot is more of an academic (not that those two are somehow mutually exclusive, but my point is that one is writing from a personal/political perspective while the other is offering an anthropological analysis).  Still, the two articles offer disturbing insights into the lucrative, and sometimes manipulative, world of marketing products to young children - girls in particular.  Global sales of Bratz products reached two billion dollars in 2005; sales of Barbie were higher, at three billion dollars.  Sales at Disney Consumer Products, “which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one ryal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001,” writes Orenstein.  More disturbingly, there are apparently 25,000+ different princess-related products, everything from band-aids to balloons to makeover parties that little girls can use as a theme for their birthday or similar. 

How do they get those sales?

Well, they way the marketers tell it, little girls are born with the desire to wear pink and be glamorous (while boys, I presume, want to be soldiers and wrestlers?) and that desire just has to be triggered.  Consider this exerpt from a conversation Orenstein had with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive who became head of the consumer-products division at Disney and who largely deserves credit for launching the princess craze.

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. ‘’We simply gave girls what they wanted,'’ Mooney said of the line’s success, ‘’although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.'’

As you listen to the folks who sell Bratz dolls and Barbie’s - who are more geared to older young girls than the Disney products - you hear a variation on the same. 

What Bratz dolls are both contributing to and feeding on is a culture in which girls play at being “sassy” — the toy industry’s favored euphemism for sexy — and discard traditional toys at a younger age. (Girls seem to be growing out of toys earlier than boys are, industry analysts say.) Toy marketers now invoke a phenomenon called K.G.O.Y. — Kids Getting Older Younger — and talk about it as though it were a fact of modern life over which they have no control, rather than one which they have largely created. Mattel’s Scothon said, “Kids are certainly exposed to more things at earlier ages. Their scope of reference is wider. Their exposure to media is greater.” Larian told me, “Little girls are really much more sophisticated now than they used to be.”

I don’t believe it.  I don’t think every little girl is born with the desire to be a princess.  Companies like Disney and Mattel and M.G.A. make these dolls like they do and focus their marketing efforts to go right for the heart of the young girls, and not the parents, because they know that the young girls can be manipulated and the parents feel, in a lot of cases, powerless against that force.  Growing up, I manipulated my parents in the same way kids today do to get the toys, or similar, that I wanted — and though I can’t cite a specific commercial or similar, I was almost certainly motivated to do so by the shows I watched or the peer pressure I felt from other kids my age who had these tools). 

What I don’t understand - and I am not a parent, so maybe this knowledge will come with age - is why so many parents give in.  If a young child screams and yells about needing pink, Cinderalla-themed bedding, why do parents get it for them?  Would a parent give in if the child screamed and yelled about getting something dangerous, like a knife?  What kind of message does that send to the kid as they grow up?  And more importantly, if you as a parent don’t think that the princess culture is appropriate for your child, why don’t you make a more focused effort to help shape your child’s perspectives - to combat some of the millions of dollars spent on marketing to them?  I don’t think we have to keep kids away from all forms of media so they aren’t influenced by advertising, but there must be some way to teach kids how to have some perspective on what is right and wrong, what is important and not, or even what is real and what is fantasy.

It is easy for me to say, I know, and I don’t mean to criticize or editorialize on how people parent.  After reading these two articles, I feel compelled to understand more about what impact marketing and communications - in this case to parents, to kids, around products, etc. — has on our society.  I work in this industry, and while I prey on many of the same forces that the Disney’s and Mattel’s of the world do, I hope that I don’t think of all consumers as pawns in some giant game.  What types of changes can we in the marketing industry make to improve things in the future?  As a consumer - and hopefully some day a parent - what must I demand so that I retain some control in my thinking about what products are necessary?

Any thoughts?

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day.  It is an important global, political event designed to raise awareness and help address the spread of this terrible, deadly epidemic.  It is also an opportunity for companies and organizations to show off their marketing capabilities when it comes to serious issues.

Naturally, JoinRed, the innovative business and charitable effort to raise funds for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, is going all out today.  In addition to the giant billboard they unveiled along the MassPike here in Boston last week, they are being promoted on the Google home page and have released a new web video from Bono.

I’m looking around all day for other campaigns.  What are you seeing?

Old Media Scare Tactic… About New Media

This week’s issue of U.S. News and World Report features a blurb about the future of political communications.  It reads:

Political Ads: From Bad to Worse

Sorry if you hated all those candidate calls at dinnertime during the last two weeks of the midterm elections, but it’s only going to get worse in 2008. Both parties plan to invade your computer with instant messages and pop-up ads, and your cellphone and BlackBerry will get zapped with text advertisements. But there is good news. They plan to cut back on TV advertising because it just isn’t as effective as the Internet.

I don’t disagree with the facts — political campaigns will absolutely adapt to meet the changing communications needs of the audicence.  I do, however, take issue with the presentation.  The tone of this little blurb is a sad example of how old media — the stodgy magazine writer in this case – has to scare traditional political folks into believing that more focused, more personalized communications is somehow bad. Campaigns will not recklessly send text messages or use pop-ups (nobody uses pop-ups anymore!  c’mon!) to reach voters. 

Puhlease. 

Why Candidates Watch What You Buy

AdWeek has an article about micro-targeting - the political strategy of using lifestyle data (magazine subscriptions, shopping habits, etc.) to target and communicate with voters.  I am quoted.

My first quote is about the value of micro-targeting:

“You are now targeting based on behavior,” says Brian Reich, a senior strategic consultant at Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, a Washington public affairs shop that handles lobbying and ballot initiatives. “You understand a lot more about a person based on how they spend their time and money, rather than on how they identify themselves.”

My second quote is about the difference in approach to elections demonstrated by the Republicans and the Democrats:

The Democrats’ data-gathering strategy pales in comparison. Prior to this year, some states lost or discarded voter data between elections, according to the DNC. And unlike Republicans, who handpick candidates early on and develop corresponding campaign messages before the upcoming race, Democrats often find themselves playing catchup— waiting until a candidate gets the party nomination, then figuring out how to sell him or her to the voters.

The disparity between these arrangements is obvious. “If you wait until [a nomination] to tell people you have to mobilize, you have a problem,” argued Reich. The Democrats are now in a scramble—and the stakes are high. Many political observers are predicting that the GOP may lose its lock on both houses of Congress. But for that to happen, the Democrats must win 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

I have never tried hid my frustration with the Democratic Party and its use of technology.  I wrote an article for Personal Democracy after the 2004 cycle about the mistakes I felt the Democrats had made in developing their database for example.  And while the Democrats have made a much larger commitment than many expected over the past two years, I think the Republicans are are still far ahead of the Democrats, and have a more practical approach to the use of technology to support their election activities. 

The Democrats will probably win big next week — take control of the House, maybe the Senate as well.  Still, the Democrats will lose some close seats because the Republican message and turnout machines are using technology in a more focused and efficient way.  They have identified the most important political activities and found ways to use technology to support their efforts - whether its targeting and message delivery, opposition research, Get-Out-The-Vote or similar.  In other words, technology is not the story. 

If the Democrats do win big, the message that more needs to be done will likely be lost… the focus will be on the President’s failures in Iraq or the corrupt practices of the Republican leadership in Congress.  Political experts and the media give credit to liberal bloggers, or the few candidates who found a way to tap MySpace or YouTube with changing the face of politics.  And while there is some truth to that, and they all deserve some credit for pushing this discussion forward, there is more to the conversation.

Democrats continue to invest in technology, and I believe they are closing the gap that exists between them and the Republicans in this area.  But, there is still a fundamental difference in the philsophies of the two parties — and until Democrats position technology as an element of the campaign, and not the story itself, the Republicans will continue to have an advantage.

SRI In the Rockies: The Big Picture

I spent the weekend in Colorado Springs, CO attending SRI in the Rockies, the annual gathering of the socially responsible investment industry in the United States.  I was there to participate in a panel about online marketing and host a topic table at lunch on the same topic.  I also had an opportunity to attend some of the speeches and sessions — and learned some new things about climate change its impact on disease, micro-finance and, perhaps most interestingly, the future of the internet.

Bob Veres, an author, speaker, and one of the most influential people in the financial services industry (socially responsible or otherwise) gave a talk entitled ‘’The Next Society.’  The focus of his talk was how the world of sustainable investments has changed, and continues to evolve, and how the world is now following the lead of SRI - for the better.  He noted that a decade ago, social screens were seen as a depressant on fund performance while today, social screens are the very best way to evaluate corporate character and avoid surprises in your portfolio. 

Then he launched into a commentary on the changing nature of communications and how it relates to the tough work of changing the world.  Here are my (rough) notes:

- The media industry is in crisis.  Stories are covered and then disappear.  Stories are covered by people who don’t know much about the subject and who have a very short attention span.  The future of news will be an environment where you can access a lot more information, a lot better information, from people who know a lot more than reporters.  And it will make everything more focused, more meaningful, and more actionable.

- The web has created a hostile world for advertising.  As we move towards the web as a content delivery vehicle, corporate america will not be able to artificially create demand for their products and services.  It is harder and harder for advertisers to gain interest and traction.  That is why TV advertising is suffering and that is why the future of communications will be information/content-centric, and not marketer driven.

- We are experiencing the death of the consumer economic system.  Why?  It doesn’t relate to the issues that people actually care about most.  That has also given rise to the concept of “Life Planning.”  People are finding they don’t want more stuff.  They want more fulfillment from their lives.  How do they know? 

Ask yourself, if you had one day left to live, what would be your biggest regret?  Write down 30 goals you want to achieve this year (the first ten will be easy, the second ten more difficult, the third ten will make you did deep).  If you had all the money in the world, what would you want to do?   

- How can we change the world?  He offered two directives:

1) Operate in your zone of personal genius.  Imagine a circle, with a circle inside that, and a circle in side that.  At the center of that innermost circle is a  blue dot that represents your greatest energy, focus, and passion.  That is where we must all operate - get rid of the distractions and just work within our blue dot.

2) Hire a coach to help you get there.  They will help you put aside all of the work you do for others and help you focus on just what you need.  The coach will nag you because they will present your own goals back to you in such a compelling way that you will do for them what you can’t seem to find a way to do for yourself.

- The way we work is changing.  You are going to see most of the world’s work being done by ad hoc teams who are experts in their field and who are operating within their blue dot.  You will see corporations (who right now have office buildings filled with generalists and inefficient information flow based in hierarchy not expertise) “melt like sugar cubes in the rain.” The people who own the assets will control them - you won’t need marketers, etc.

- The internet will become the superconductor of human and financial capital.
The speech made me think.  Not sure quite yet what it all means, but rarely does a conference speech make me think like this one did, so that must mean something.

Shut Up & Run the Ads

I wrote a post yesterday discussing the marketing efforts behind Shut Up & Sing, the new documentary about the Dixie Chicks and their criticism of President Bush.  You didn’t see it?  Nobody did.  My computer froze up and I lost the text before I was able to put it up online.  Too bad — when I wrote it yesterday morning, this was a small story and my analysis looked really solid.  Now its a big story and I am late to the conversation.  Alas.

So what are people talking about?

The documentary tracks the fallout that resulted after lead singer, Natalie Maines, said she was “ashamed” that President Bush was from Texas, the Chicks’ home state.  The comment prompted a boycott of the Chicks’ music by conservatives and opened up a discussion about freedom of speech among scholars and those in the music industry.  Time passed, things died down.  But now, the documentary has brought the controversy back to the fore — and with a new twist.

A handful of media venues have refused to run advertising promoting the movie.  The LA Times covered it yesterday.  There was a story on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning.  And the Washington Post summed it up this way:

It all started earlier this week when Weinstein submitted ads for its new Barbara Kopple documentary “Shut Up & Sing” to the broadcast networks for review by their standards and practices departments.

NBC said it “cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.”

CW said it “does not have appropriate programming in which to schedule this spot.”

Weinstein said: “Eureka!”

And on Thursday evening, it sent out a news release headlined:

“In an Ironic Twist of Events, NBC and the CW Television Networks Refuse to Air Ads for Documentary Focusing on Freedom of Speech.”

“It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America,” bemoaned Weinstein Co. co-chairman Harvey Weinstein.

“The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is sad and profoundly un-American,” he added.

As I see it, this hubub was not only anticipated by Harvey Weinstein and his team, it was a key part of their promotional strategy.  How else would you get coverage for a small-budget documentary film in today’s big-budget Hollywood movie promotion craziness?  We have a very tense election cycle coming to an end just two weeks from now, and a national media that is feasting on any criticism of the war, or the President, they can find.  All you had to do was light the fire. 

Of course, now the networks are in a no-win situation now — if they don’t run the ads, the press continues to cover the story (helping the movie gain traction, and the stations look selectively moral), and if they do run the ads, they look like they caved.  I think they should run the ads - networks would benefit greatly by becoming a part of the political dialogue and letting the population decide on its own.  Be fair, show ads promoting and criticizing the movie if that opportunity exists, but don’t limit one perspective from being heard because you are afraid of your audience.

Give credit to Weinstein and Co. for recognizing the opportunity to use the news cycle to promote their movie.  It is not a new strategy — MoveOn got into a similar fight with CBS around the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, and I have had clients whose online ads that venues have refused to run because of an arbitrary content standard.  In both cases press coverage resulted and the message ultimately got to the target audience. I don’t think it will work for any movie or event, but its a strategy that more organizations should understand and pursue.