by Next Wave Team | Jun 14, 2006 | Advertising, Change the world, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, Guerrilla Campaigns, Low Budget Advertising, Marketing & the Web, Media, Viral Marketing, Web strategy
Channelnewsasia.com
It’s coming- and if you are a middleman in the content delivery system, watch out. To define middlemen: record labels, movie studios, television networks (cable, broadcast, pay-per-view)- the people who come between the content producers - and their audience. The only people who will still be able to profit from this are the quality aggregator distributors like the Apple iTunes store, Amazon and probably Google (who may or may not - own the online world in the near distant future).
Read the link above- to find out how an unknown, small time singer, gave a concert to 70,000 people from her basement. Even if this was a set-up by a label, there are enough nerdy music geeks out there that can figure out how to do this on their own.
Sandi Thom now has a number one UK single- just recently the hip-hop band Gnarls Brakley have a UK number 1 hit purely from downloads.
Music is driven by word-of-mouth and the preferences of the “early adopters/ innovators”- more so than other product or service categories. If you are trying to build a brand quickly- using good webstrategy can get you to the top quicker than conventional media. If you don’t believe it, go ask Sandi Thom.
by Next Wave Team | May 3, 2006 | Advertising, Change the world, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, Marketing & the Web, Media, Web strategy
The State of Maine hired a NY ad agency, Warren Kremer Paino Advertising, LLC, to handle the Maine Tourism account. WKP then built a site- and bought search terms with State money to direct traffic to the site. Apparently there are no creative people living in the state of Maine, but, there is one semi-smart web developer.
Lance Dotson is the owner of the Maine Web Report- a blog, who quickly found the cost of his google ad words increasing when WKP started bidding up the prices of keywords using tax dollars. He said some things on his blog- that suggested that WKP was “pissing away” Maine tax dollars- and competing with him. WKP decided to sue.
This story is making the rounds in several spheres- bloggers concerned about being sued, free speech advocates worrying about rights disappearing, ad agencies worried about bad pr, and maybe even the people selling search words like Google and Yahoo.
Here is The Next Wave take on this mess: The State of Maine and Lance Dotson and WKP all have made a mistake- because buying search terms instead of creating sites that generate organic (unpaid good results based on the quality of the content) is the lazy way to generate hits for your site.
The State of Maine, and anyone else who hires an agency like WKP- who’s entire site is built in Flash- and has no real search results on it’s own, should be questioning their agencies ability to build an effective web site in the first place. To see how many pages are indexed in google- go to the search window type in: site:yourdomainname.xxx and you will see the results- WKP has 3- with zero indexed content.
Instead of buying search terms- that money could be used to continue to develop useful and informative content- or to promote the site and the State using other media.
Maine should fire WKP- because they’ve brought the State into an embarrassing situation with negative PR, and because they were “pissing away tax money”- but this is typical of government buyers who issue RFP’s without fully understanding what they are buying.
I’m sure this story isn’t over- there are lots of places you can look to read more:
The blogging journalist
Fuzzy Blog
Boston.com
Maine web Report
But the important thing to remember on the web is that content is what is important- and if it can’t be found by search- it’s not good content.
Now- I’m going to say what I really think:
Agencies that buy search terms as part of a media strategy are whores. Even if they aren’t marking up the buy, they don’t love their client- they just are too lazy to work to make the site sell itself. Good content gets you the search engines love for free. Ask us- or look us up- we’re on the front page of Google for quite a few search terms.
For right now- the search engines revenue engine is driven by Internet lust- by clients like the State of Maine who don’t know what makes a site index- or work. The search companies are feasting on the uneducated by pimping the top spots and the right side of the results page to the highest bidder. While we don’t believe prostitution should be illegal- we do believe that pimping is the most deplorable form of trade there is- and both the search companies – and agencies who buy results are nothing but pimps.
Those are fighting words- and for good reason, this is a controversy that needs to be discussed. The model of agency compensation has been broken for a long time- but paying auction prices for placement is not a win for the client. The agencies job is to ADD value to the clients products or services- by finding a unique selling proposition- or creating an aura of desirability that wasn’t there before. Not by slapping some keyword make-up and a bigger budget on some haggard creative.
What do you think?
by Next Wave Team | Mar 14, 2006 | Advertising, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, Future of TV, Marketing & the Web, Media, Web strategy
So, this is a rant. It’s also a comment on the future of advertisings golden child- television ads. It’s also a message to Rupert Murdoch- who obviously either doesn’t get it- or is putting up a good front. It’s also a message to local NPR affiliates who are up in arms about NPR making programs available as PodCasts. Oh, yeah- Clear Channel- you too- wake up.
To those powerful people that still believe that they can “bundle” programming- that they don’t create- and resell it as a package, your days are numbered.
A la carte TV will work- it will just be delivered by someone other than:
- Television networks
- Broadcasters
- Cable systems
- Satellite TV systems.
These are all soon to be obsolete leftovers from the day when it took expensive technology and hardware to distribute programming. Much the same way that if you build newspaper printing presses- you best be looking for a new profession. “Bits not atoms” as Nicholas Negroponte said in “Being digital” way back in the nineties. In other words- what is digital, should stay digital. The articles on the computer at the newspaper should stay on computers instead of being converted to ink on dead trees. Same goes for digital media like TV shows and movies- and radio broadcasts- no need to “package them” anymore- just put them on a server like the iTunes store and deliver them direct to the consumer- unbundled.
So, I’d be willing to pay $5 per episode of the Soprano’s- in HD quality, or $2 in podcast version. And if Cadillac wanted me to learn all about Tony’s new Escalade- they could subsidize my download (I’ll watch and interact with their 2 minute infomercial for $5 off my $5 download- where they will quickly learn that I’d never drive that monstrosity unless it ran on water). Note- I don’t really need anything else from HBO- at this point Netflix does a better job of delivering movies to me- and as soon as HD DVD’s appear- HBO’s last advantage will be gone.
While NPR affiliates are worried about losing access to their subscribers due to podcasts- what they haven’t worried about is creating valuable local community oriented content- which would have helped them build a relationship with their audience- allowing them to have their listeners come to their sites instead of the national site. It’s a learning curve that will sort out the visionaries from the hacks in media really quick.
So- while I can’t download the Soprano’s right now- I’m more than ready too- and HBO better find a new model for distributing the only products that they have had a hand in creating.
The idea of A la carte cable packages only is a discussion if you still believe anyone needs the distribution systems of yesterday. As soon as there is a digital rights management system as solid as iTunes available to everyone- content producers- like David Chase, producer of “The Soprano’s” will be able to sell their programming direct, with an intermediary aggregator like iTunes store or Google video offering the nexus that provides the targeted message insertion handling for those who want to subsidize their viewing.
For me- all I want is my Soprano’s now- so, HBO if you are listening- put it up on iTunes- before you force me to either go to a friends house- or to Bit Torrent. One show isn’t worth a $70 cable bill a month. Capish?
What do you think?
by Next Wave Team | Mar 7, 2006 | Advertising, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Guerrilla Campaigns, Marketing & the Web, Media
AsiaMedia :: Ailing radio broadcasters see promise in podcasts
I grew up listening to the greatest radio station in the world (see my previous post on WMMS).
It was intimate, it was timely, it was a relationship- between me- and the coolest people I knew.
Those days are long gone- since three major networks gobbled up every station in sight.
Now- I see that Japanese broadcasters are trying to last gasp their audience by making their programming available as pod casts. We’ll see how fast it happens here.
But, advertiser be warned- a podcast is much the same as TV on TiVo- where unless your radio/podcast spots are really great- they will be skipped.
Soon- the only relevant local offline advertising will be outdoor and guerrilla.
What do you think?
