Kia Decides That It No Longer Wants Its TV Commercials To Be Entertaining

from the um...-why? dept

For a while now, we've been pointing out how, for advertising to be effective, it also needs to be good content that people don't just "not mind" seeing, but which they're willing to actively seek out. It appears that automaker Kia has decided to go with the exact opposite strategy. Reader Brooks writes in to point us to the news that Kia's new marketing director in the US doesn't want people entertained:

"We don't want to spend a good chunk of our time in a 30-second spot trying to entertain people."

That's part of his plan to move away from a series of rather entertaining commercials that have provided plenty of free advertising for the firm, as people passed them around virally. Apparently, Kia would prefer that no one help them advertise and, indeed, that no one actually watches their ads. Time to think again, Kia. If you want advertising to be effective, it does need to entertain people.

Filed Under: advertising, cars, content, entertainment
Companies: kia

Making Content Convenient Creates More Value Than Locking It Up

from the time-is-money dept

Megan McArdle sings the praises of Amazon's digital media strategy, noting that she can now get her music, movies, TV shows, and books all from one company and have them all neatly organized and made available to her. Amazon's digital store is convenient because it remembers which content she's purchased and allows her to re-download any of it on demand from anywhere (Update: Some readers are pointing that while you can re-download Unbox movies and Kindle e-Books, you can't re-download music from Amazon's music store. My apologies for the error.). That means that she doesn't have to worry too much about preserving individual media files; she just needs to remember her Amazon ID and Amazon takes care of the rest. One thing she doesn't note, though, is that while the MP3s are DRM-free, the Kindle books and Unbox videos are still crippled with DRM. That means that if she ever decides she dissatisfied with Amazon's service, there may not be an easy (or legal) way to take her content with her. And precisely because she's putting all of her digital eggs in one basket, it will be particularly painful if she ever needs to switch services. As nice as some of Amazon's services are, I'm not personally willing to subject myself to that degree of lock-in.

Megan's observation also illustrates what's wrong with the common argument that DRM is required for subscription services. It is often claimed that without DRM people would just subscribe to a service for one month, download all the content they wanted, and then cancel. But this ignores the fact that people's time is valuable. Most people don't want to waste a lot of time organizing, transferring and backing up their content. I think Megan is pretty typical in wanting a single place in the cloud to store all of their media. If the price of a subscription service is reasonable, most people will find it more convenient to just stay subscribed and download content as they need it. Of course, you'll have a few people who play the download-and-cancel game, but a lot of those people would probably have downloaded their files from BitTorrent anyway, so it's no great loss. And at the same time, ditching DRM creates a lot of new value because it eliminates compatibility headaches and gives customers the peace of mind of knowing they can switch if they ever need to.

Filed Under: content, convenience, drm

Ownership Doesn't Make Sense In Communications

from the you-don't-own-your-conversation dept

Earlier this week, we explained the root cause of many of the problems the entertainment industry runs into when it tries to deal with copyright online. It views the internet in the same way that it views a broadcast media content platform, when it's been designed and used primarily as a communications platform. The entire concept of copyright doesn't make sense in the realm of regular communications. You don't worry who owns the copyright on the conversation you have on the phone or the email that you write to a friend. Yet, when viewed through the prism of a "content" platform, these are open questions. The same is true of things like blog comments. Yet, suddenly we find people arguing over who "owns" comments place on a blog page.

Mathew Ingram does a nice job highlighting the key issues that were raised this week on that question, but the whole conversation took a turn for the bizarre when Hank Williams weighed in. This is the same Hank Williams who posted a poorly researched defense of copyright. Now he's back claiming that the issue of who owns the copyright on blog comments is a really important question. If anything, you would think that the points he raises in his post would actually be the perfect evidence for why his original post was wrong (though he seems to miss that). It's quite clear from what he wrote that copyright law doesn't handle this situation very well -- which makes sense, because copyright is (again) designed for broadcast media, not communications. But rather than realize that's a good reason why copyright shouldn't apply at all here, Williams doubles down on why "ownership" over comments is something that needs to be worked out -- he suggests that blog and comment system providers create a totally useless mechanism to "declare" ownership of comments.

Except that this system is not at all necessary, and would only lead to more problems. The entire purpose of copyright is to act as incentive for the creation of that content. Yet, I think most people would find it preposterous to claim that the reason they commented on a blog was because of the protections provided by copyright. In other words, there's no question to worry about here because this content was all created without copyright being the incentive. However, in this bizarre and twisted world where infinitely available resources need to be shrunk down and "owned," Williams insists that we need to figure out who has the copyright on comments.

In the comments to Hank's own story, things get even more bizarre. First, Hank suggests that if the blog owner "owned" the comments then that might mean that the blog owner also "owned" the liability associated with those comments (which could mean in cases of libel or copyright infringement). Once again, though, Williams is showing his ignorance, as both cases are clearly covered by the safe harbors of the CDA and the DMCA, and the stacks upon stacks of case law concerning liability on things like blog comments. It's quite clear that Williams thinks ownership of infinite resources is a good idea -- but he doesn't appear to have thought through what that means and why it's neither necessary nor a good idea. Too bad.

Filed Under: blogs, comments, communications, content, copyright, hank williams, ownership

The Difference Between Content And Communication In The YouTube/Viacom Billion Dollar Spat

from the this-may-take-a-while dept

It's been well over one year since Viacom sued YouTube for $1 billion, but these things take time. Late Friday, Google filed its response to Viacom's recent filings in regards to the lawsuit, and basically said pretty much what you'd expect Google to say:

1. that it follows the rules of the DMCA's notice-and-takedown procedure
2. that it does everything it can possibly do to stop the sharing of any copyrighted content that it's alerted to and
3. that Viacom's claims that it's not doing anything are clearly incorrect.

Google also makes the rather important point that the DMCA safe harbors were put in place for a very good reason (to make sure liability is focused on those actually liable) and if the court were to overturn those safe harbors it could dismantle much of what makes the internet work as a communications platform.

What's really left unsaid (but is an important point of conflict that we're going to see more and more of over the next few years) is that this suit demonstrates the different ways that certain companies are viewing the internet (and how our existing laws are basically duct-taped together to account for this difference). Media companies still look on the internet as a content platform. That is, they think of it as a new broadcast medium. Most other folks recognize that the internet is a communications medium, and the focus should be on the ease of communication. That's a problem for anyone who comes from a world of broadcast media, and it creates all sorts of problems for copyright law that is designed mainly to protect a broadcast-style media. Yet, when it comes to communication, the idea of using copyright to restrict content gets weird in a hurry.

In typical communication, copyright makes no sense. You don't worry about copyright (even though it exists) when you send a letter or an email to a friend. You're communicating, so of course the idea gets copied and repeated. In broadcast, the broadcast media model was always based on control and artificial scarcity. The DMCA safe harbors are kind of a kludge to deal with this difference, putting the onus on the communicator not to be breaking someone's copyright, leaving the communications platform out of it. Yet from the perspective of the media companies, they view the internet as a broadcast media, and thus the YouTube's of the world aren't communication platform providers, but competing broadcasters. Hopefully, the court will recognize the reality that the internet was always a communications platform, and it's just the broadcast media (who are late to the party, anyway) who are trying to force it to act more like a broadcast system.

Filed Under: communication, content, copyright, dmca, takedowns
Companies: google, viacom, youtube

Content Is Advertising... On TV

from the but-you-need-to-be-careful dept

Continuing my series of posts on how all content is advertising and all advertising is content, there was an interesting story last week about how a top ad agency is teaming up with NBC to create TV shows around sponsors' products. This is an interesting idea, but the risk is in how it's being implemented. Such a strategy worked well when BMW put together its BMWfilms effort -- but the focus there was very much on making sure that the films were top notch. It involved star directors making quality short films that didn't necessarily promote BMW, but had BMWs in those films. The content itself was quite entertaining, and many people watched them.

And that, of course, is the key element here. The content itself needs to be compelling and stand alone as quality content, no matter what the products being showcased. Also, since the films were clearly labeled and promoted as BMWfilms, there was no "hidden" product placement. Everything was very upfront and aboveboard. What I fear with something like this new experiment from NBC, is that the the advertisers at the table will have too much of a say in the creative content, and will focus on making sure the product is positioned right, rather than making sure the content actually works and has entertainment value.

It will also be interesting to see how NBC handles promotion of this series. Will it be treated like any other series? Will it be available online? Will NBC let others copy and share it? Will there still be interruptions from commercials when it airs on TV? The answers may be very telling in how NBC is approaching this effort. Either way, this will be an experiment worth following. My guess is that, given the players involved, it will fail. The ad agency will push too hard to make the content more focused on the sponsored products. NBC will struggle with how to position and promote the show. And the whole thing will disappear quickly. I'd love to be wrong, and see real quality content come out of this, but, that may be asking too much at this point.

---

Other posts in this series:

• Advertising Is Content; Content Is Advertising
• On Content, Promotions, Basic Economics... And Loutish Statements
• Content Is Advertising... In The Newspaper Industry
• Content Is Advertising... On TV
• Newspaper Content Is Advertising For More News Content

Filed Under: advertising, content, product placement, tv
Companies: nbc

ABC Tries To Limit How Other Networks Report On Debate; Networks Ignore ABC

from the ah,-copyright dept

About a year ago, there was a push by some to get both the Democrats and the Republicans, along with the various television networks showing any Presidential debates to agree to freely license the content of any debate afterwards for any kind of media coverage. While some agreed to this, others did not. In fact, with last week's Democratic candidate debate, it appears ABC tried to take the issue even further. It demanded that other networks show less than 30 seconds of debate clips the night after the debate. This is quite similar to the restrictions MLB and the NFL have been trying to put on reporters as well. ABC claimed that it needed to do this because it delayed the broadcast of the debate on the west coast until later in the evening. First, people on the west coast aren't stupid. They know the debate already happened. Pretending it didn't isn't going to change much. Second, it seems ridiculous that ABC time-delayed the debate in the first place. But, most importantly, restricting how others can report on a news event seems pretty pointless -- and, indeed, the other networks basically ignored ABC's demands and broadcasted as much as they wanted to of the debates.

Filed Under: content, copyright, debates
Companies: abc

You Don't Win Fans By Limiting How They Enjoy Your Content

from the backwards-thinking dept

The CW television network, which is the massively struggling television network that was formed when the already massively struggling The WB and UPN merged seems to have a rather bizarre way of trying to get more viewers. It's making life more annoying for them. The channel's one popular show is apparently a show called Gossip Girl, which has a bunch of online tie-ins, considering that one of the main characters is an anonymous blogger. CW has been streaming the shows online, which found a big audience, as its target market likes to consume plenty of content online. The only problem? Advertisers aren't paying as much online, so the channel has decided to stop streaming it online, telling fans to watch it on TV instead. It's not hard to understand why this will fail. First of all, they're giving fans of the show fewer options in terms of how to watch it and they're taking away the preferred option. That's not exactly a way to win fans. The fans who really like watching it online will continue to do so, of course, but now they'll do it via BitTorrent or some other system, which the CW gets no revenue from. This isn't a captive audience that we're talking about here. If the channel makes it that much harder to actually watch the content, they'll move on to other content that actually caters to what they want. It's yet another attempt to force artificial scarcity where there is none, and in this day and age, that's not going to win fans. It's going to lose them.

Filed Under: content, convenience, cw, fans, gossip girl, internet, tv
Companies: cw

Just Because Content Is Free Doesn't Mean It's Worthless

from the let's-try-this-again dept

A few folks have asked me to comment on a recent post by Jonathan Handel, an entertainment industry lawyer, bemoaning the idea that content has become "worthless." If this sounds familiar, it's because he's merely the latest in a long line of folks to confuse price and value. That's unfortunate, too, because the piece starts off really solidly, with an extremely accurate understanding of the basic economics impacting the content industry. He notes, as we have time and time again here, the reason that price is getting driven to zero. His mistake, though, is equating price with value. He gets really close to recognizing this in his fifth point, where he notes that: "Computers, web services, and consumer electronic devices are more valuable when more content is available." In other words, that content does have value, it's just not reflected in the price (due to the infinite supply).

What's really unfortunate, though, is he then comes to exactly the wrong conclusion out of all of this. Rather than recognizing that the fact that content increases the value of so many other things opens up a ton of new business models, he goes off and makes a bunch of statements that simply aren't true about what's happening in the content industry. First, he claims that there's now less money to be made today in content creation. That's simply untrue. There's a lot more money being made in content creation than ever before -- but it's much more dispersed. It's no longer all being made by a few big content companies. Then he says (and this is almost laughable): "Another effect is that the market for professional content is becoming more concentrated and less diverse." That's simply not true at all. The number of people producing content for money is larger than at any time in history.

The problem seems to be that Handel only considers content made by big content companies as legitimate professional content. This isn't just elitist, it's wrong. What these new models have done is created legitimate ways for totally new forms of professional (and, yes, it is professional) content creation. Professional content is coming from many sources these days, and while that may be a threat to the old infrastructure -- it's not a threat to professional content, which has actually become less concentrated and significantly more diverse. Anyone who thinks there's less diverse content available these days isn't looking very hard.

Finally, he claims, oddly, that "audiences are shifting more of their spending to hit properties" which pretty much goes against everything that most of us are seeing online with "the long tail" and such things. Since Handel seems to only define media as big media and assumes that all content that is free is "worthless" it's no surprise that he'd ignore it in his calculation. But, the simple fact is that he's wrong about what's happening. Content may be becoming free, but that's opening up tremendous value (which drives more content creations) and that content is coming from a much longer tail of diverse and varied content producers. It may be troublesome for the big entertainment infrastructure he's used to dealing with, but it's hardly bad for the real content industry.

Filed Under: content, diversity, free, price, value, worthless

People Overestimate The Value Of Content; Underestimate The Value Of A Service That Makes It Useful

from the time-to-understand-the-difference dept

A silly mini-battle broke out among some bloggers over the weekend concerning some new RSS-feed aggregation site. It's a battle that plays itself out every few months or so, and which we've tried to discuss a few times in the past. What happens is that people get angry because this aggregator (or reader, or browser or whatever) is actually able to build a business around other websites' content. And that gets plenty of folks, including those who I quite frequently agree with, like Mathew Ingram and Tony Hung, to complain that the service has somehow "crossed a line" by building a business "on the backs" of other people's content.

The problem, however, is that this is simply untrue. If it were true, then a ton of online sites would be guilty of the same thing -- including Google. But the reason it's not true is quite simple to understand: if all they were doing was reusing other people's content, then there would be no incentive or reason for people to visit these sites. Why go to these sites when you could just go to the original sites? The reason that people go to these sites, and the reason why these sites can build a business, is because they add value to the content in the form of some sort of service that does more with it. They're not building businesses "on the backs" of others' content, they're building services that people find useful as a way to find, interact with, share or comment on that content.

Unfortunately, though, as we see time and time again, people seem to overvalue the content and undervalue the service. That's why you have newsapers that sue Google, even as it's bringing them more traffic. They overvalue their own content, and undervalue the service that Google is providing: making it easier to find their content. The same is true of just about every other service that kicks off this kind of debate. The service is making it easier to consume, read, share, comment on, organize, find or interact with the content. Otherwise, it wouldn't get any users. The content is important, yes -- and valuable too -- but don't underestimate the value of the service that it performs on that content. So the next time one of these fights breaks out, pay attention to whether people are unfairly blaming a site for "stealing" content, and notice if they're undervaluing the service itself.

Filed Under: content, services

Who Wants To Watch Full Length Movies On Their Mobile Phones?

from the please-tell-me-this-is-an-april-fools-joke dept

We were just talking about how people don't want to watch broadcast TV on their mobile phones, as the content isn't really designed for people on the go, and all of a sudden Sony thinks that people will want to watch full-length feature films on their mobile phones? Yes, Sony has worked out a deal to offer streaming feature films on AT&T mobile phones starting in May. The films are old films that have already had all the marketing life squeezed to death out of them ("Karate Kid," "Ghostbusters," "Bugsy"). While there won't be a charge to watch them, they will include advertisements (because there's nothing people like better than watching commercials on a tiny mobile screen as they wait to see the ending of "Ghostbusters"). Oh yeah, also, viewers have no control over the timing. It's not "on-demand," it'll just be an ongoing loop. Weren't companies like AT&T just complaining about too much bandwidth being wasted?

Filed Under: content, mobile phones, movies, streaming
Companies: at&t, sony