According to Wired Magazine, the average American spends 8 to 9 hours a day in front of a screen. Based on the premise that information consumption should be as healthy as food consumption, the magazine suggests this as a ‘balanced diet’ in this information-overload age:
Now, I’m reasonably media-savvy, and the very existence of this blog indicates how much I’ve embraced Web 2.0. But there’s one thing about the research findings and the pyramid that has me perplexed:
What’s happened to work?
Popularity: 8% [?]
Christmas: the time of year when people who don’t like music buy music, and people who don’t read books buy books.
If you’re a music buff (I mean the sort of person who has Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoyos on vinyl, or who thinks the Rolling Stones blew their credibility with the 1966 ‘Aftermath’ album) then you’ll watch the TV ads promoting the new Boyzone covers of Westlife (or vice versa) and weep into your cushions.
Well, here’s the truth. They’re not aimed at you. The target is people who buy records twice a year – usually for Christmas and Mother’s Day.
Similarly with books: Despite the mind-boggling statistic that the UK publishing industry produces 4,000 new titles a week , book buying is a minority activity.
According to Nielsen Bookscan, 20% of all book sales happen in the run up to Christmas. While the literati may be out in giddy force looking for the new Herta Muller or Elizabeth Strout, the majority of sales that happen in the next six weeks will be to people who usually go into a bookshop for a coffee and to shelter from the rain.
THE LAST HURRAH?
Added to this, the book trade is going through the same radical shift that the music business has experienced over the past ten years. The arrival of Amazon changed the game (much as I try to support independents, for at least five years the majority of my book buying has been online), as did the entry of the supermarkets. So trying to complete with that shift in models has become increasingly difficult.
But, to misquote Bachman Turner Overdrive, they ain’t seen nothing yet: the Amazon Kindle and Sony e-reader – plus other lesser-known platforms – are about to change the whole paradigm of the industry, in the same way as the MP3.
So the booksellers are having to work doubly hard to wring the most from their peripatetic customers at this time of year – because it might be their last oturn on the swings.
Deep discounting is common, best known as the 3-for-2 offer which has almost become the standard now in the sector (in the same way that furniture stores have an annual sale. Not once a year: ALL year.)
So hats off to my local Waterstone’s branch for this moment of genuine merchandising insight:
Not sure what to buy your husband / son / uncle / nephew / brother this year? But know that he likes watching all those BBC re-runs on that blokey channel.
Well, Waterstones have made it a straightforward purchase. Here, in one place, are all the celebrity brands and TV tie-ins that you might have heard of, and you feel pretty sure that he’ll enjoy.
Don’t scoff; it may not be the high culture or specialist niche that interests you – but it is a triumph of customer understanding and sales promotion. Helping a customer base that isn’t quite sure about the market, doesn’t quite know what’s acceptable now to buy for a 17 year-old grandson (“they grow up so fast don’t they?”) but who recognise that nice young man off the telly.
It’s a superb example of Sales 101: Selling is making buying easy.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Death can be a great career move -- but it takes considerable skill to pull it off successfully.
Elvis is the role model for passed-on profits. The pelvic mumbler may have ingested his last burger in 1977, yet in 2008 (three decades after his ‘bathroom’ demise) he earned $52m. That was 25% more than Madonna.
Having said that, he’s been seen working the fries at McDonalds in Memphis so, like-for-like, Madge way not be too far behind.
Of course, this is not generated by a flesh-and-blood person; this is a revenue stream for Elvis the Corporation. It’s a brand, a back-catalogue and a devoted fan base determined to keep the man and his music ‘alive’.
This is a global business, and you have to admire the endless creativity of rights owners in fully exploiting both their intellectual property and the gullibility of the public.
ELVIS! LIVE!!
Did you know that you can still go and see Elvis in Concert? He’s touring Europe in 2010. Thanks to a mix of projection technology and the reunion of his ‘former band members’, you can spend an electrically-charged evening (literally) watching the musicians who failed the Cocoon audition try to keep pace with a film of a man on steroids.
A case of sixty, drugs and rock’n'roll.
And while you’re booking your tickets, you can also buy -- “for the first time ever” -- a DVD of the his legendary performances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Or how about going to stay in one of the ‘Elvis-accented’ rooms at the Heartbreak Hotel? (Read the small print, and you’ll be disappointed to learn that ‘accented’ means there’s a picture of him in each room.) You might want to splash out and upgrade to one of the Elvis-themed suites. There’s a choice -- the Graceland, the Hollywood, the Gold & Platinum and, of course, the honeymooners’ Burning Love suite.
Ahunk ahunk of Burning Love indeed.
And if you can’t move out of your house (a statistical probability for Elvis fans), then he’ll come to you -- at least, you can sign up for Elvis updates. This is a new definition of the word which the student of career death needs to understand:
In my Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘update’ means ‘the act or instance of updating’; in Graceland it means letting you know that they’ve found another tape in a box in the loft, and that a 52-part series (with never-before seen photos) will be available soon.
All of which can be paid for with you Elvis-branded Visa card.
FAB FOUR AND MORE
You don’t have to be entirely dead to benefit from no longer being around. Half The Beatles are still with us, and yet we now have another re-issue of The Beatles back-catalogue: “re-mastered, re-packaged and re-discovered”. And to much acclaim. Read the customer reviews on Amazon, and it’s 5-stars all the way. Then again, if you’d just paid £170 for 12 albums that you already owned in two previous formats, you’re not likely to say ‘I wuz robbed.’
Also this week, the launch of ‘The Beatles -- Rockband’ on Sony PS3, dutifully supported by wall-to-wall Beatles coverage on the BBC -- an entire weekend on Radio 2, and a week of programs on BBC Four. Even my daughter had the good sense to ask why: “Did someone die, Daddy?”
No darling. But one of them is now a pension salesman and the other got divorced.
To be fair, those in the know say that Rockband is beautifully produced and very engaging -- if playing plastic toy guitars and pretending to be a pop singer is your thing. It just isn’t mine.
But don’t think that making money from being dead is a foregone conclusion. The holders of the Presley and Beatle brands are (despite my cynical tone) very, very good at what they do. Wild horses couldn’t drag me to Heartbreak Hotel, but you have to admit -- it’s an obvious ‘brand extension’, and probably serves its target audience very well. Stick of Jailhouse Rock anyone?
The Michael Jackson Estate could learn a lot from Graceland and Cavern Club.
TICKET TO (BE TAKEN FOR A) RIDE
How black must the mood have been in the AEG offices the day that CEO Randy Phillips heard that Jackson had shuffled (moonwalked) off? Phillips’ company was promoting the 50-date concert series at London’s O2, and 750,000 people had paid up to £75 each. AEG would have to pay it all back.
Or not. In a stroke of genius -- and commercially, I don’t think the word is too strong -- Phillips re-invented the very nature of ‘ticket’.
Consider the usual purpose of a ticket: it is proof of purchase, a receipt for a transaction that is not yet complete. In effect, the purchaser is exchanging one promissory note for another: ‘I promise to pay the bearer…if you promise to provide a service that will entertain me’.
(As a Southampton fan, I’m not sure how that works…but that’s for another day.)
Not so, said Phillips. It’s not a ticket at all; it’s a souvenir -- albeit of an non-event. In a stroke, Phillips created an entirely new market: the virtual memento. So what if something doesn’t happen? There’s still a merchandising market opportunity for it. To join in the fun, I am open to offers for my Led Zeppelin 2009 World Tour jacket.
Anyway, this wasn’t just a common-or-garden ticket. This was a MJ ticket. The man himself had hoped that people would ‘keep it as a reminder of the memorable evening that they would share together’. He had personally been involved with the design. And it had been produced using a Lenticular printing 3D process.
So fans had a choice: refund or non-ticket.
PRECIOUS MEMORIES
Websites and blogs were hot with indignation. Out of respect for Michael, and out of respect for Michael’s fans (and their respect for his respect for them), how could AEG do this? It was immoral. And anyway, “I bought a £75 ticket and my friend only bought a £50 ticket, so I’m paying 50% more than her for a memory of an event that didn’t happen.”
Yes -- but your non-existent memories would have a clearer view.
Despite the absence of respect, AEG later claimed that ‘40%-50% of ticket purchasers had taken the option to receive their tickets’. Worst case, that’s 300,000 people who are now spending time thinking about the evening they didn’t spend together. With or without Michael.
(If that wasn’t enough, at the end of October Sony Pictures releases a film of the concert that never happened. Remember that 30-second rehearsal clip that Phillips showed as evidence of Jackson’s well-being? It’s now going to be a motion picture event, and ‘a gift to Michael’s fans’.)
It will give them something to cling to while they wait for the next non-performance.
Just yesterday, the much-heralded Vienna Tribute concert collapsed, with many of the promised stars failing to commit an appearance. It’s now being rescheduled, to London in June 2010.
Tickets start at £44 -- although no-one seems to know what you’ll get for your money. Not that an absence of content seems to stop any of the riders on the Jackson bandwagon.
DEAD CERT?
This looks like a chronic case of ‘more haste, less speed’ in the Jackson camp, but with an army of would-be Colonel Tom Parkers out to make a buck or two, Jermaine and Co obviously think they need to strike while the body’s still warm. (Fancy buying the Jackson Opus, and 38-pound book with -never-seen-before-photos? Yours for just £109).
Whatever your opinion of the man (repugnant) his music (infectious) or his dancing (the best on film since Astaire and Kelly), watching this soap opera play out could some day become a business case worthy of Harvard or LBS. The Wacko side of Jackson won’t be a hurdle: as pop-commentator Paul Gambaccini pointed out shortly after Jackson’s death, Judy Garland was a washed up, alcoholic mess when she died. Today, she’s an icon.
The collective memory will paper over Jackson’s cracked behaviour, and remember only the performances. More difficult to call will be the management of the core material -- the ownership of which will become a bloodbath. There’ll be some very rich lawyers at the end of all this, and probably a very bitter family.
Meanwhile, the man in the mirror will either become a billion dollar enterprise, shadowing all that has gone before, or a forgotten footnote.
It’ll take 30 years and a generation to decide.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Here’s an interesting Euro-election fact (first pointed out by Ben Goldacre on Twitter yesterday): While the BNP took 6.2% of the UK vote, the Pirate Party took 7.0% in Sweden.
Earlier this year the four founders of Pirate Bay (a file-sharing website) were fined £3m and jailed for a year by the Swedish courts. It became a cause celebre, once again bringing the issue of copyright and open access into the public spotlight.
The Pirate Party has obviously benefited from a backlash against the verdict. On its platform to ” fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens’ rights to privacy are respected,” it mobilized the youth vote of Sweden, and will now take its first seat in the European Parliament.
At first pass this looks like a single issue, flash-in-the-pan, of-no-consequence moment-of-madness from a nation that has 200 ways of serving herring. But there’s more to it than that. Watch his Channel 4 report, and listen to musician / producer Alexander Bard:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1184614595?bctid=25698199001
BROUGHT TO BOOK
In his excellent article in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago, Ian Jack proposed that as the publishing world goes into meltdown, we are seeing the return of the gifted amateur. The economics of the £500,000 advance just doesn’t work any more (if it ever did), and it’s time to remind ourselves that Trollope was a postmaster, Eliot was a banker and Angus Wilson worked in the British Museum.
The total access to a distribution mechanism for both writer-and-reader / musician-and-listener has changed the dynamic completely. And with it the economics.
Hardly an earth-shattering insight – the sort of thing that was being predicted by futurists like Paul Saffo and Kevin Kelly in the early 90s. However, while we’ve become used to the technology, I don’t think our mental models of the world have caught up. As Bard points out, there’s a fantastic contradiction between the perceived ‘right’ to download and the dream of having a recording contract.
Even Kelly starts is current homepage telling us that he’s writing a book.
FEEL FREE
This comes in a week when Channel 4 has announced that it will make its entire back catalogue available on the web for free. (So much for artists living off repeat fees.)
And at the end of a month when the Great British Public has risen as one to condemn our MPs for expenses ‘fraud’, while at the same time we’ve been downloading MP3, torrent streams and other file-sharing workarounds. Which under current law, is theft.
These episodes have made me realise that great content on its own doesn’t make money; there must be control of the means of distribution. If I can limit access to something you want, I can charge you for it. That’s why Amazon has developed the Kindle – which will change the game again for book publishers, newspapers and booksellers.
I have no idea how this will play out: I doubt anyone does. The only certainty I can see is that while I write the Great English comic novel, I’m not giving up the day job. Before, during – or after.
Popularity: 43% [?]
BAD SCIENCE
Ben Goldacre’s book continues a trend that has emerged in my reading over the past couple of years: non-fiction aimed at debunking the imbecilic, the deluded and the irrational.
It started with Francis Wheen’s “How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World” – a polemic about flying saucers, New Age spirituality, financial fraud (oh how we should have listened), cults, quakery and moral confusion.
Last year, I found Michael Bywater’s “Big Babies: Or, Why Can’t We Just Grow Up“, a rant against the infantilization of the modern world; how we are treated like children who can’t make their own decisions in a big big bad world. “Peanuts: make contain nuts”; “Hot Coffee: contents may be hot.”
Both books are very funny; both books are thought-provoking, and tap in to the Grumpy Old Man zeitgeist. But on reflection, they’re little more than accumulated anecdotes used to illustrate a series of prejudices. Very entertaining cultural criticism, but hardly analyses based on scientific principles.
‘Bad Science’ takes the debunking genre to a different level altogether.
Dr Ben Goldacre (a medical doctor, with a medical degree, from a recognised university – unlike many of the ‘experts’ he investigates) writes a column for The Guardian and runs a website collecting stories of manipulated drug trials, selective evidence, misrepresented statistics and fallacious solutions to ill-defined problems.
In doing so, Goldacre has upset many people and created a lot of enemies – many of whom are in the media itself. His biggest complaint is that most journalists and editors come from the Humanities background and don’t understand the scientific method generally, or evidence-based medicine specifically.
As he puts it, most science stories in the press aren’t covered by scientists.
Hence, we are fed an endless stream of nonsense, presented as ‘proven’ treatments: detox patches; Hopi ear candles; colonic irrigation; fish oil supplements that improve GCSE results – Goldacre’s book is full of analyses of the pseudoscience behind this quakery, and why intelligent people find themselves believing stupid things.
In his sights are Dr Gillian McKeith(PhD), Professor Patrick Holford, Durham Education Services, Big Pharma, MRSA and the MMR Hoax. As he demolishes each one, the reader is given a primer on the scientific method and the use and abuse of statistics. If nothing else, the book is the answer to those people who complain that “I don’t know why we do half the stuff we do in maths at school. It’s no use.”
There’s no doubt that Goldacre is a highly intelligent man; sometimes his tone – both in his writing and on-screen – is slightly smug. But we should forgive him that – because he’s right.
I cannot recommend ‘Bad Science’ too highly. It’s fair, well researched and presents complexity with great clarity. At the risk of sounding like the blurb on a cheap self-help book, it will change the way you see the world: For the better.
Popularity: 39% [?]
Bill Drummond thinks that we have reached the end of recorded music.
His thinks that ‘real’ music makers are looking for new ways to create and share their work – like his ‘17′ project, in which he’s recording 100 choirs of 17 people all singing a single note, which he will play back to them at a one-off, never-to-be repeated event, before destroying the recordings.
Bill Drummond might be mad. And I love him for it.
WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONARE?
To set this in context, he was behind KLF, the acid house group that made a fortune in the early 1990s, then incinerated it to kick off their ‘K Foundation Burn a Million Quid’ tour.
He also considered cutting off his hand at The Brit Awards, but had second thoughts on that one.
Since then, he has popped up (I was about to say ‘on the art scene’, but Drummond really transcends that sort of pigeonhole), acting as one of life’s agents provocateurs, challenging conventional wisdom, posing difficult questions, and generally making people feel uncomfortable.
His latest notion is that recorded music is dead. The more I think about this, sitting at my PC, listening to some easy jazz on Windows Media Player, the more I think he’s onto something. Here’s a summary of the story so far:
1) The most important artist in the history of recorded music is… Enrico Caruso. In his short life (he died aged 48) he made over 220 recordings of tenor arias which meant that his public could now listen to him at home.
While that appears to be stating the blindingly obvious, that’s because we’ve all grown up with it, and assume it to be part of the ‘natural’ state of affairs. In Caruso’s time, that was as significant a leap as powered flight. It changed everything.
He reached an audience with a representation of his work that hitherto had been the preserve of those who could get to La Scala or The Met. It was the beginning of the ‘democratisation’ of music.
In his way, he was the Bill Gates of the early recording industry. Edison and, later, Berliner may have created the hardware platform, but Caruso created the software. What did a member of the gentry want with an ugly wooden box and a great horn stuck on top of it? In itself, they didn’t – but they did want to listen to and to show their friends that they listened to the world’s greatest tenor.
2) The most important day in the history of recorded music is 5 July 1954, when a young truck driver walked into Sun Records to record a couple of songs for his mother. Fooling around between takes, he sang ‘That’s All Right (Mama), and the legend of Elvis Presley was born.
Putting aside Presley’s importance as a cultural icon, his significance in this context is that prior to recording, he had no musical career. He was entirely created by the record industry, a reversal in the relationship between artist and medium.
3) The most important year in the history of recorded music is 1966, when The Beatles and Glenn Gould made the same, paradigm-shifting decision: they would no longer play live:
Classical pianist Gould wanted to concentrate of the Bach canon, and felt that the intimacy of the chamber genre couldn’t be communicated from the concert platform;
For The Beatles, the decision was more complex, but there’s no doubt it was heavily influenced by the fact that the techniques they had started to use on Revolver (tape looping and early sampling) couldn’t be toured. Sgt Peppers would be impossible to perform live.
And so the template changed again. The record (more specifically the album, by now format-of-choice) became an artefact in-and-of itself. Not a device for promoting the live performance, but an artwork that would stand alone.
4) The most important technology in the history of recorded music is the mp3 file. Think about how it is changing our relationship with recorded music:
* The album is redundant: through iTunes, Napster or any other file sharing site (legal or pirate) we can now pick and choose our tracks;
* Music is ubiquitous: we can play it anywhere, any time, in almost any circumstance. Muzak used to be limited to lifts, hotel lobbies and shopping centres. Now we take our own aural wallpaper wherever we go;
* There is no barrier to access: we can now reach any artist, any genre, any song, any composition, any time. And that ease makes us lazy. Music has become background sound, filling the empty spaces of our days, and plastering over the sonic mess of everyday life.
THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED
Drummond points out that before recording technology, music was context-depended: from orchestral compositions for State occasions to folk-songs in the field. Once it could be packaged and transferred into another setting – more importantly, any setting – it started to lose its meaning. Which in turn, diminished its value.
It is the paradox of the democratisation. When something is available all the time, at very little cost, we value it less. This is not an argument for exclusivity; rather it’s just pointing out that when the tap can be turned on at any time, we take water for granted. And with that, the thrill has gone.
The thrill of knowing that your favourite artist’s new record would be released in three months. Saving your pocket money to buy it. Selling stuff at school to make up the difference. The bus trip to town on Saturday. Entering the record shop and seeing its bright cover, smelling the cellophane wrapper, turning it over and reading the track list – the liturgy for the mass that will follow. Handing over the money, receiving the plastic bag and realising that the prize was yours. Cuddling it on the bus ride home, the hero returning from his/her quest. Rushing upstairs to your bedroom, turning on your record player, and then, and then…
The black circle, etched with a fine line that fragmented the light on its surface. Your hand, palm-spread as wide as possible across the underside, balancing it with care so not to mark the surface. Two hands now, fingers either side of the round, lowering it gently into place. Start the turntable. Bend down, eye-level with the needle. Gently lift the arm and …pause…anticipation…will it be as good as…swallow nervously…holding your breath… you drop the needle onto the surface…the speakers ‘bump’ then ‘hiss’ then…it begins. And it’s the best moment of your life. It is glorious.
Today? Point. Click. Type. Listen. Forget.
WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO
Do not think that this is a Luddite’s blast against the new and a return to the ‘good old days’. I love the web to the point of addiction. But there is no doubt that a lot of the ritual has gone, and with it, the magic.
This is what Drummond – with his off-the-wall, left-of-centre performances – is addressing. More specifically, he’s asking us to wake-up. If you’re one of 1700 people to have participated in his choral project, and you know that when you hear it in its full performance, it is the only time it will ever happen and that it will be destroyed immediately after – wouldn’t you pay attention?
Like you did the first time you placed the needle on that album.
The quality of that moment wasn’t in the music itself (the experience is equally relevant to the classical collector, the punk and the Roller’s fan). The quality was in the attention.
In the film Diva, the plot centres on a pirate recording of a operatic soprano who has never made a record. The only way you can experience her voice is to see her live. She believes that scarcity increases the quality of the moment.
That truth and the iPod are not easy bedfellows.
Popularity: 23% [?]
“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consistent of believing, or in disbelieving; it consists of professing to believe what he does not believe.” Thomas Paine
It is Sunday morning. Ben and I sit in the kitchen. I skim the pages of a broadsheet, while my 13 year-old son reads one of yesterday’s supplements; he’s found a review of a new X-box game that, at a guess, involves disembowelling vampires.
BEN: That’s really cool.
ME (not looking up from the Arts section): Have you played it?
BEN: No. But it’s got 5 stars in here.
ME (wondering about getting tickets for the new ‘Godot’): And that makes it ‘cool’ does it, because it says so in there?
BEN: Well, it’s why we buy the big papers, isn’t it?
And I realise that I am at one of life’s key parental conversations. We’ve talked about sex, about bullying, about drugs. Now it’s ‘truth’ in the press.
M: How do you think a newspaper makes money, Ben? Where does my £1.50 actually go?
B: The paper shop?
M: Yes – to Mr Singh, and to the distributor who delivers the papers to the shop each morning. By the time they’ve taken their cut, it doesn’t leave very much for the people who make the papers. So how does a newspaper make its money?
We pause. Ben flicks a page or two, looking for a picture of a hole to crawl into.
All he can find is listings for London cinemas.
B: Advertising.
M: Spot on. The newspapers sell space to companies who want to sell things to their readers. No advertising, no newspapers. So the first thing to remember about newspapers is that their business purpose isn’t to print news. It’s to generate advertising revenue.
B: Cool. So why do newspapers write all this sort of stuff? (He points at a feature about a soap actress in the ‘Property’ section.) Why not just run ads?
M: Because too much advertising wouldn’t be very interesting, then no one would buy the paper. That’s the publisher’s dilemma. It’s a question of balance.
B: So get more journalists writing more stories.
M: Well, that’s good for you as a reader, but not good for the publisher as a business. That’s more cost.
B: But there’s loads of writing in these papers, pages and pages of news.
M: Is there? What is ‘news’, Ben?
B: Um…Stories about things that happen in the world. Gaza and the Credit crunch and things like that.
M: And all the sections of this newspaper are full of that, are they?
B: Well, no. Looking at this part (the listings insert he has in front of him), it’s got records and dvds and films and stuff.
M: A famous newspaper publisher called Randolph Hearst once said: “News is something that somebody, somewhere doesn’t want to see in print. Everything else is publicity.”
B: So what’s this? (He points to the soapstar ‘profile’).
M: Read the final paragraph – the bit in italics.
B: “The Notting Hill flat is on the market for £675,000 with Foxtons”
He stops and smiles. A penny drops, and for the next few minutes he’s ploughing through pages of newsprint, looking for publicity stories: a disgraced MP and his new book; a glamour model and her new TV series.
B: Jokes! (it’s a different language, but I’m keeping up) It’s all Publicity! All of it!
M: Well, not quite ALL. But most of it is. And the reason is simple – it’s cheaper than news. News takes time to research, time to collate, time to write, time to check. And as the businessman running the newspaper, you want to cut your costs – but you need to keep the amount of editorial content, because your readers demand it.
B: So make the journalists work harder.
M: Going to be a media mogul when you grow up? Despite the stereotype, most journalists and editors are incredibly productive. But when the advertising people sell more space, it creates a need for more editorial to keep that balance. So it becomes very tempting to use packaged material from publicists and agents and PRs, who are being paid for by someone else.
B: So the editor can fill more space, while the publisher keeps his costs down. Cool. So is this publicity?
He has found a ‘car of the year’ piece by Jeremy Clarkson. To a teenage would-be petrol-head, Clarkson is a deity.
M: Well, it has no news value, but it isn’t promoting anything in particular. So we’ll call it Entertainment – one of the main reasons people chose their Sunday paper.
B: So what about all this (he points back at the cinema listings).
M: That’s the fifth type on content. That’s Information; helpful facts to help you make decisions. You’ll find a lot of those in the Sundays, especially in the Travel sections.
B: News. Advertising. Publicity. Entertainment. Information. Is that it?
M: Pretty much. It’s a good filter to apply each time you read the paper – especially to weed out the PR man’s dream – Publicity that’s being presented as News. Put it in another order, and it spells PAINE.
B ??
M : Thomas Paine was a man who lived round the time of the American and French Revolutions. He wrote a couple of very famous books, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason. He was quite complicated, and no friend of the Church or the English Government, but all you need to remember is his basic philosophy – we should each think for ourselves. So when you read the paper, and to make sure you read with a questioning mind, remember PAINE. Think for yourself, not the way that others want you to think.
Fatherly advice duly dispensed, I head for a morning shower. Twenty minutes later, Ben is standing in the bedroom door.
B: I looked up Paine on the web. He might have written those books, but he died in poverty and no one went to his funeral.
M : Yes, well, ermm…
B : I bet the man who publishes the Sunday paper won’t die poor.
M : Probably not.
B : Although all that stuff we talked about, that’s on the internet for free. So ‘praps he will.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Listening to Mark Kermode’s round-up of ‘Films of the 2008′ the most damning thing he said about the latest Bond, Quantum of Solace, was that the blatant product placement didn’t interrupt the narrative of the movie.
Because there is no narrative.
With the major film studios now spending over $100m just to promote a movie, all financial contributions are being gratefully received. Similarly, as advertisers find it increasingly difficult to be heard about the din of the marketplace, communicating with a captive audience is an opportunity too good to miss.
Expect to see a lot more blatant product placement in the near future, as the boundaries between the studios, media owners, technology providers and distribution networks become increasingly blurred.
The shift to digital also creates new possibilities. I predict that soon, brand managers and corporate sponsors will be able to insert their product or message into the studios’ back catalogues. Indeed, I am setting up a new agency to advise in this area. Here are my initial thoughts on possible ‘value enhancing synergies’.
Apple – All About Eve
Guinness – Black Narcissus
Ann Summers – Brief Encounter
Parcelforce – Deliverance
Fairy Liquid – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Dyson – Gone with the Wind
Kleenex – Home Alone
Strepsils – Little Voice
Skype – Look Who’s Talking
Audi – Lord of the Rings
Dulux – Magnolia
Tarmac – Paths of Glory
Harrods – The Prince of Egypt
Ronseal – Rabbit Proof Fence
Velcro – Hook
London Stock Exchange – Raging Bull
Chelsea Football Club – Roman Holiday
Rolls Royce – Silent Running
Michelin – Star Wars
Google – The China Syndrome
Greggs – The Fabulous Baker Boys
Eurostar – The French Connection
Microsoft – The Great Dictator
Rotring – The Thin Blue Line
News International – The Wizard of Oz
All further ideas and suggestions are most welcome…
Popularity: 20% [?]
In the web world, what is the difference between private and public? Where is the boundary between what I want you to know and what I want to keep to myself, or maybe share with others but not you?
I was speaking to a couple of friends over the weekend. G had finally signed up to Facebook, rationalised his decision by saying it was voyeuristic, then ended the week – after three of four people had tracked him down and he was getting messages from all points – stating he felt that he had boarded a runaway train.
Last night, J happened to mention that he had noticed a group I had set up for a couple of other friends. Not really a problem other than it gave me the sense of being watched, and I woke up to the public-ness of my online profile.
PASSING STRANGERS
Isn’t that why a blogger blogs – to be watched? If not, then may as well keep a diary. The blogsphere IS public; Facebook IS public. Certainly, it’s possible to limit access (only four people can access the group I mentioned) but to start, one wants to attract as many readers as possible. I want you to read me.
Of course, as long as the readers are the RIGHT readers. Like a film star who starts to resent privacy intrusion after years of chasing fame, I’m starting to wonder where the barriers are. Having strangers get close is uncomfortable. Should I have taken a nom de web before starting out on this integrated path of social networking?
J told me that users under 30 have understood this from the off. They think nothing of adapting 10, maybe 20 online personae – and hide behind them all. Don’t ask me how they keep track: there’s probably a software app to help. But it gives them freedom to express what they really think and feel, even if it’s non-attributable.
A neat solution for those wanting to do or say things they won’t do in the physical world. And great for younger folk trying to find out who they are – like trying on different styles in a shoeshop.
THIS AND THAT, HERE AND THERE
But for G and J and I, we’ve chosen to be ‘ourselves’, which means that the social filters are already on. Even so, there are some things that we say to our friends that we wouldn’t say to a business colleagues, and vice versa. In the physical world, that separation is straightforward to keep – I see colleagues in THIS location, I meet friends in THAT location. But in the websphere, that’s much harder.
(Even the physical boundaries are blurring: in my first 10 years in business, I always wore a collar and tie to work. Always. Even if I was working at home, I’d still put on a collar and tie, just to remind myself that I was working. And when I’d finished the day I’d remove the vestments of work and ‘become’ someone else. Now that it’s dress down Friday every day of the week, that differentiation has gone too).
Technology tools have done a lot to take each of us through the private/public boundary. The first time I saw an executive at IBM take his laptop on holiday I was astonished: surely he wanted a break from work? His reply: “There are no longer vacations, just different locations”.
SET OF TOOLS
The physical mobility and the access to information certainly makes for a different relationship between work and play, and has received a lot of coverage and debate. Everything from EU directives on working hours to work/life balance. It’s not easy to find an answer, but at least we have a vocabulary and set of tools with which to think about the problem.
The exchanges over the weekend have highlighted for me that on the subject of the virtual boundaries of privacy, we have barely begun the conversation.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Second Thoughts