Posts Tagged: media convergence

web2.0 — No Comments
12
Nov 09

Brand Benefits from Co-Creation Web Media Projects

Co-creation is a new, important media direction for Brand managers trying to find cost-effective ways to reach fewer, more relevant people online (read my top 7 benefits to Brands below). One of the major challenges with online advertising and promotions is in reaching the early adopters/thought leaders with the right message.  These people typically do not click on banners, hate spam and are too savvy to fall for link bait. There are also complex  issues around Brand Trust that make people wary of clicking on offers.   Co-creation changes the low-cost cpm/high-spray model for brand managers and gives an powerful new approach for online community participation.

French Brains (not human)

More brains the better? Sorry this is sorta disgusting. But the point is about getting more people involved via online communities. (French brains, not human btw).

It is of course ideal to have community members enrich content–but is UGC to hard to deal with online? Is it too random and too much spam? How to get to the next level = Community-Inspired-Content (CIC).

What is Online Community Content Co-Creation?

There are 3 main participant groups need for a co-creation program: 1) Brand 2) Community Manager 3) Community Members.  The Community Manager (which is how we see our role at Heritage Key) needs to create the focus and deliver the program.

The Brand and the Community Manager should frame the focus of the content and outline the mix (video, articles, interviews, virtual, real world events). The real new area is to get the right balance between commissioned work and user generate content (UGC).  UGC needs to be on-point with the focus, but more importantly needs to allow the Community Members their own space to participate.  I think the real world events are an important part of this.

The Co-Creation program should run over a period of time like 3-6 months. We think of it as a sort of series. People can then catch if from start or  catch-up through referrals or web buzz around the activity.  You can also have an endpoint where you can convert content into a final package.

Benefits to Brands

  • New Relevant Web Content – Content is unique and will fit major interests of the community members. It should also be branded and embeddable off the main microsite (via widgets or YouTube players).
  • No Other Brand Interference — it would be exclusive to the sponsoring Brand. No noise, no unexpected placement. And the microsite area would be much more engaging than an Brand controlled site.
  • Community Interaction — program should offer people chance to contribute (for free or payment), share opinions, contests, join real w0rld events.  Ideally there should be some time-based momentum designed into the program.
  • Leverage Existing Brand Assets – Brands can repurpose or simple use existing assets and place them in proper context/linking to new content.
  • Fresh Ammo for PR — Program should give PR/Marketing teams new materials to work for customer and media outreach.
  • Destination to Drive Promotions — Brands can use their existing email lists to drive customers/prospects to microsite for targeted promotions. Surveys can also be very useful to learn more about customer needs.
  • Speed to Market – Community Manager should be able to deliver program rapidly and across 3-6 months time period to build momentum.
  • Innovation – Brands should seek Community Managers that offer web site, websphere, and interactive applications that when combined with new content will be very exciting.
  • Lower total costs — Co-Creation should not be massively expensive. It will have potentially high CPM metrics, but you would expect reasonable total costs and good CPA downstream.  It is key to understand that co-creation right now is a way to access the early adopters and thought leaders within the communities, so it should also be considered as a strategic play.

We are working on Content Co-Creation programs for Heritage Key that will be focused on visting/experience history of ancient world sites. These programs  will mix video, virtual and article content.  More info will be shared soon!  Get RSS or follow us on twitter @xlent1 or @heritagekey or for virtual content @rezzable .

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convergence / web2.0 — 2 Comments
14
Oct 09

From Old to Newest Media in the Time of Convergence

One of the biggest distinctions between the future of what users will want to do on the internet from what they did or in fact are doing now, is the difference between being passive viewers and active participants. Old Media doesn’t get this important orientation on how it needs to treat its audience. Imagine a bar where you could only talk to the bartender? It is like the mentality of the Economist to set a paywall for their content and beg for their “loyal” customers to pay. The “make–>push” content model is not going to thrive in the Time of Convergence (which is almost really here this now btw).

In my little sketch above I am trying to tease out some of the key issues facing online media organizations. Our approach of course, as you can see in Heritage Key ( I hope), is from the almost-off-the-chart right position of newest media. We are trying to figure out how to mix the content-focus with social tools with the interactive tools in the most unique way.

I can break-down some of our ideas as follows in terms of the content that we make and people consume:

  • News — breaking items, needs to be fast on the site and some value add to reacting to web flares, creating news content is a big plus
  • Articles — this is the focus of the commission effort to effectively surround useful topics with a series of articles, interviews, video pieces. You would expect to gain some lift on google/SEO as you create content against sets of keyword objectives.
  • Media — images, video, galleries, maps that are either unique or curated. Presentation and navigation are critical. We use Solr now to add discovery aspects to site search.
  • Interactive — answer the challenge of what to do on the site. So we have some quizzes, but really the big attraction for Heritage Key is the Virual Experience (GoVirtual).  While enabling comments on a site is not always so easy, it is hard to consider that basic feature as very interactive these days.
  • Directory — collects, curate, manage relevant data that is needed by the community. Add community/social filtering to expose data back to site visitors (i.e. popular, rated recently, new)
  • UGC — shift now is to manage the flow of user generated content and raise relevance and quality. YouTube is struggling as an example to separate out the noise/infringing content from the serious/regular content creators. My sense is that the site owners need to direct/drive UGC a lot more. It will be the role in fact of the site to help people do more than they can otherwise do themselves = a better package, more traffic, more distribution, more promotion as much as a better concept.

These are the components, the challenge is to get the mix right and scale the production costs against the overall revenue potential of the site/brand.

As we continue to rollout our vision on this in Heritage Key, it is clear why Old Media doesn’t get Convergence and why even New Media players will have challenges making the next transition. Organizations work better on push. You can plan, manage push in a much more predictable manner. Where the site needs to marshall the community, well, it is a lot more difficult and outcomes less certain. Video killed the radio star. The requirements for success in the future will be no less dramatic. The “push” stars won’t “pull” communities.

One way to mitigate some of the risk is to get the hardcore users into the alpha/beta testing areas. It is important to engage people that will be the evangelists or even find solutions with you. But you will need to expose the ongoing work–which is a minimum is uncomfortable. With large deployed online brands it may require new branding and even new sites as testbeds/community crucibles.

Another point in comparing the players that is worth making is about the cost of content creation. The Old Media players have very high costs, often with long cycle times from idea to publish. Production costs must go down. Newest media content production is low and will get lower. The quality is perhaps not the same, but as we already see with blogs and tweets the immediacy is must greater.

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convergence — 4 Comments
8
Oct 09

Media Convergence = Browser on TV

I think about the future of media, technology so much that I worry that I think the present is the past. But check a LED tv playing a Blu-ray disc and immediately you will see that the future is now here (and can be delivered to your home by Amazon).

People who wax eloquently about how nice it is to open a book and feel the pages, see the great images in them of course still have a great point, but they should also consider how hard it is to get a Wii controller out of the hand of a 6-year old (or forty+-year old).

Media Convergence, what is it all about? Well, in a simple way it is the endgame where you can finally browse the web on your tv. It is, however,  a lot wider than just your living room as you can consume digital media on the go as well. You can download an eBook to an inexpensive reader and subscribe to podcasts on your iPhone.  LED televisions, which might catalyse Convergence to the next phase, are awesome and not so expensive even. These slim, low-energy devices blast intense digital data at you and in their afterglow, you will understand that the digital future will be arriving at your home real soon.

What is exciting about this Convergence though is not just the really cool ways in which we can access media or how stunning the quality is–it is the shift from audiences being passive watchers of broadcasts, printed materials to the active mode of pulling what you want, when you want it, how you want it. Further the social web puts you into the mix and let’s you participate and (typically) enjoy the interaction a lot more.

It is really this fundamental change in consumer behaviour that will be impossible for “old media” to deal with.  The audience needs to become the community. The content creators are not commodities but the leading voices and micro-stars that engage and drive the energy. The web generation is consuming online data voraciously. It is active, it is multi-threaded, it is cross-platform — and they are the stars of their own shows.

Online advertising is already pushing beyond both print and television. What is going on in the Book Publishing Industry? Of course a lot of the latest data coming from print, media and book publishing industries is depressed due to the overall global economic crisis. But nonetheless, if you take a look at the stats from the AAP about US book sales in July 09 book sales you can see some interesting trends.  Sales for eBooks are $16.2mm and growing rapidly–but trivial in the mix of the $25 Billion industry.  New hardcover and paperbook sales were holding their own during the summer time, but taking a beating compared to last year. Mass market titles are potentially no-man’s land down 15% compared to last July and down 5.3% for 2009 trend–probably this area is under the most direct pressure from online.

Book publishers should also be very concerned about their Educational books — where they enjoy some big margins, but also face major issues with costs for students as well as a whole new way of studying.  Higher education titles had $941mm sales out of a total of  $1.54 billion which is more than 60% of the total pie. What will the new media landscape do to the textbook market? Is the combined force of economic pressure and the newest way of digital media consumption a cocktail that shakes the publishing industry into a froth in 2010? Net net, Book Publishers are fighting online for shrinking piece of a shrinking pie.

We are thinking a lot now on how to create the new wave of content and brand experiences that will thrive when it is really out with the old and in with the newest in 2010. Our first pass on all this is Heritage Key. Check it out and let us know if we got it right or not!

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