Cargo Cults, Kevin Smith And The Difference Between Connecting And Going Through The Motions

from the it's-called-authenticity dept

I've noticed an interesting thing lately when talking about business models in the internet era. Critics of those business models like to brush them off as "this is nothing new," or "yeah, yeah, we all know how to do marketing gimmicks or personalized promo." On Monday, when we wrote about what Kevin Smith is doing, we got a few comments along those lines -- stating that "four walling" is nothing new. In fact, even Kevin suggested this, in talking about what Bob Weinstein said to him after the event on Sunday.

I actually think there's more to it than that, and that the difference is important, so figured I'd do a separate post about it. We've talked a lot about cargo cult science and how lots of folks make a huge mistake in just copying the superficial "stuff they can see," rather than the core, underlying reasons of why something works. If you don't recall, the basis of cargo cults, I'll let Richard Feynman, who coined the term explain the basics:

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

This kind of thing happens all over the place, and certainly in many of these discussions. It's easy to dismiss the various models based on just a superficial look at them. "Taking a movie around as a tour? Why that's just four-walling and it's been done for ages." But that's the same thing as looking at the setup on those islands and wondering why the planes don't land. What makes the planes land is the stuff you don't see and which aren't replicated in a paint-by-numbers fashion. What makes this work is not just the fact that they're taking a movie around to theaters. Just as what makes musicians special offerings work is not just that they're "personal promo." It's the other part of the equation which underlies all of that: the connecting with fans bit.

And, no, none of this means that everyone has to "connect" in the same way. Kevin Smith does it by living on Twitter and in doing his various podcasts, Q&As, etc. Others connect in different ways, with different tools. Some connect every day -- others only show up intermittently. Again, as with the cargo cults, connecting with fans isn't just "use Twitter/Facebook/whatever," it's about actually figuring out a way that works for that artist and his or her fans. It's about being authentic and true to those fans. When you do that, and you combine it with quality content and a plan that makes sense, it's amazing what you can do.

But if you just look at this as a paint-by-numbers answer to "what is the business model," you're going to fail. And that includes even some of our favorite tactics, such as using "free" as part of your strategy. As we've said time and time again, give it away and pray is no business model. Nor is just setting up "tiered" offerings. Those can work amazingly well also... but, again, without the connecting, who's going to buy. Taking a movie on tour is great... but without the fans clamoring to see it, then that's useless as well.

So mock these things, if you'd like. Or brush them off as "not new" (as if something needs to be "new" to work). But don't dismiss them because the superficial elements have been done for ages, if you're not looking at everything else that's happening to make the superficial stuff work. The answer to new business model development is not "well, we're using Kickstarter/Topspin/etc." Those are useful tools, but they're really there to enable something bigger. The answer to connecting with fans is not "but we've got a Twitter account." Again, that's a tool. The trick is to use those things properly, to connect with fans in an authentic way, which makes them want to support what you do. The tools can help you do that, but it takes a lot more than just "four walling" it to make the planes actually land.

Filed Under: cargo cults, connecting with fans, four walling, kevin smith

Cargo Cult Science In The Newspaper World: If We All Charge, People Will Pay

from the this-will-fail dept

Newspapers continue to insist that people will pay for news, but they never give any reasons why. Instead, they keep working on these vague threats of colluding and promising "you'll miss us when we're gone." The latest is that the editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, is claiming that most news sites will be charging within a year.

I'm wondering if he's willing to bet money on that, because I'll take the other side of that wager.

First, as noted, very very very few online news sites give readers a real reason to purchase a subscription. Many could if they spent the time trying to figure out how, but very few do that. They just seem to think that charging for content is the answer. It's not. But, more importantly, you get the feeling that Barber is very narrowly defining what counts as a "news site." He does a bit of "damning by feint praise" thing on blogs, but seems to (once again) confuse blogging the platform with journalism the practice (apples and oranges, certainly). So, when he talks about "almost all" news sites charging, he's leaving out plenty of things that he doesn't consider to be news sites.

The big problem with that? Most of the reading public doesn't agree. Many are content to get their news from those other sources.

Furthermore, for every major news site that decides to charge, they have just opened the playing field wide open for others to come and scoop up their market with a better, smarter business model. And don't think some smart media execs and entrepreneurs aren't salivating over the opportunity of some major publications to go behind the paywall.

Still, Barber's talk was a lot more involved than just that one quote that's getting attention. You can read the whole thing, where he spends an awful lot of time talking up the importance of journalism, as if it's some sort of mantra. "Journalism is important, so of course people will pay us, because we're important." But as you read through the speech it becomes clear what the problem is in his thinking.

He puts "journalism" on a pedestal.

He continually talks up how important journalism is to the community, but doesn't do much to talk about how important the community is to news organizations. It's standard media elitism to assume that it's the news that's so important, and the clueless public is sitting there waiting to shovel it in -- but has no interest in actually being a part of the process or included in any sort of discussion. At best, he spends a little bit of time just talking about how consumers "consume" the news in a different way, and participate in stories in a different way, but he doesn't talk much about better serving them in terms of what they want to do. No, instead, he focuses on how important news is for that community, not about helping that community do more.

Meanwhile, along these same lines, David Simon, who's rantings on newspapers we've debunked before, has written a silly opinion piece for the Columbia Journalism Review, where he tells the heads of the NY Times and the Washington Post to both wall off all their content behind a paywall, insisting they can pretend they didn't collude, by saying they just read Simon's advice and decided to take it.

Simon's column involves strawman upon strawman, ignoring economic and technological realities. He (just like Peter Osnos in the same issue of the Columbia Journalism review) uses the same analogy of cable TV. Again, to say this misses the point is being unfair to the point -- which is somewhere a few miles away. Cable TV works because of certain limitations in television. Those limitations do not exist online. That's basic technology. How pricing works is economics, and when you have limits (lower quantity supply) price can be driven up. But when the supply is effectively unlimited (such as online), then price gets driven down. That's economics. Making arguments that ignore both technology and economics are not compelling. They're a waste of time.

It's as if folks who work in the old newspaper industry still can't be bothered with actually understanding the fundamental issue they're facing. They're using cargo cult science. They remember (somewhat incorrectly) a world that was before -- a world where people paid for newspapers via subscription and only went to that source. But like the cargo cultists, they're getting the wrong message. They think that if they just act in the same way as what they remembered in the past, they'll get the same results. So if they dress up like soldiers and man the airport (i.e., put subscriptions on news sites) they'll suddenly get food to drop from airplanes again (get people to pay again).

But this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why people actually paid for newspapers in the past. At the time, it was the only real way to get that information and to be a part of that local community. The paper served the community without much competition. Yet, these days, there is plenty of competition, and these newspaper guys aren't talking about serving the community better than the competition, they're talking about limiting the value of newspapers by putting up paywalls, that make it harder for people to consumer the news, harder for people to discuss the news, harder for people to share the news and harder for people to be a part of the community.

And they'll wonder why the food doesn't fall from the sky?

Putting up subscription walls and assuming that the world goes back to normal is no different than the cargo cultists. It's totally misunderstanding the cause of what happened in the past, and thinking that if you just recreate a few superficial structures, the rest will magically come back. It won't.

Filed Under: cargo cults, charging, david simon, journalism, lionel barber, newspapers, paywall