Broadcasters and distributors discuss alternate channels for media content delivery

March 21, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

Non-traditional media delivery of content has moved into the mainstream. And a panel of Scott Dyer, EVP of Corus Kids, Claude Galipeau, Senior VP Digital Media at Alliance Atlantis, Michael Hennessy, VP, Wireless, Broadband and Content Policy at TELUS and Brady Gilchrist, EVP Strategy and Head of BlueScience at Fuel Industries gathered to discuss its implications.

Scott: Webkinz can be thought of as programming. It’s providing a compelling content experience. It’s generating a huge amount of loyalty. And it appears to have some kind of revenue behind it. Is it a channel? Not now. A channel is an aggregator. Could it be a launching point for a channel? Yes, possibly.

Claude Galipeau: Three years ago, no one thought of social media as a likely source of assembling huge audiences. But it certainly is now. And for Canadian programmers, it’s a giant sucking sound going south. The social media sites are experiencing massive growth. And there’s no Canadian site that competes in this space. So, not only is Canada losing eyeballs, but we are losing opportunities to monetize this area.

Michael Hennessy: Telus is in the channels business. Today, half of the company’s revenue is from the wireless business. And Telus is trying to combine content and channels in new ways. We’re reinventing the business because we have to. We got into the television business because the cable guys got into the telecom business. We’re now a multi-platform company. What does this do? Well, if you look at our 5 million customers, we will have 10 to 15 million connection points as customers connect to more than one channel. The social media are bringing people together in communities of interest. And the television networks are picking up on the fact that they can tap into these communities by tapping into the different channels of delivery. At the end of the day, the traditional networks will end up owning this business.

Scott Dyer: From my point of view a channel is an aggregator of content of a particular kind. The narrowness of the niche of the aggregation is a function of the audience you trying to reach and the potential size of it. For us, television has been extremely successful. We’ve always believed that television is the best device to watch television. But if you deliver content that’s appropriate to the delivery channel – for example shorter on mobile – I don’t really care about the platform.

Claude Galipeau: The convention broadcasting channel as a brand has withered away. Channels that are developing brand now are focused on a niche or theme. We want to control the presentation to ensure the integrity of the programming. The issue for us is can we have channels that are monetizable?

Brady Gilchrist: Fuel Industries is a Canadian company that does most of its work in the US. Fuel does branded entertainment. Not a lot of this is being done in Canada. We do a lot of work with brands that are getting into brandcasting. Like Wrigleys. One thing we haven’t been able to invent more of is time. All of the channels are competing for the finite supply of consumer time. With the new generation of gaming we will see the introduction of “smarts” into set top boxes. Even with traditional television, people are using PVRs to use traditional channels as a content pipe. The brand loyalty is being shifted from the broadcaster to the content. This creates challenges for the traditional program distributors in figuring out how to diversify.

Claude Galipeau: The On Demand world is transforming the monarchy of the programmers. But if you look at the ratings, you can see that scheduling flow still works. But we’re certainly seeing the audience act as its own programmer with PVRs. And a lot of broadcasters see this as accretive to the linear broadcast schedule. And it’s particular helpful to serialized drama.

Scott Dyer: Looking at viewership, the research among kids suggests that television consumption is remaining stable, but that consumption of other media is increasing. The On Demand space is additive to the linear space. And even thought our On Demand programming may seem like we are passing control pack to the consumer, we still program it very carefully. It is another way of presenting the brand to the consumer. Linear and On Demand are two sides of the same coin. Looking at our TreeHouse On Demand as an example, it is hugely additive to the traditional lineary TreeHouse schedule.

Michael Hennessy: We really look at broadcasters as partners. Our business is On Demand. It is additive. Never forget that a lot of the drive for content in the On Demand space is the top content in the linear space. What distributors like Telus are becoming is aggregators. Aggregating channels and programming. Helping advertisers to target audiences and niches. However, a lot of this stuff that looks like television isn’t. It’s social activity. And as the time in this online social interaction increases, the opportunities for monetization grow as well. It’s a huge opportunity.

Claude Galipeau: Television is still a very strong medium. Mobile providers are functioning as brand gatekeepers. However, you don’t have this on broadband. So, broadband offers a great opportunities to reach through directly to the consumer.

Scott Dyer: When you look at an aggregation of content, those are the brands that are meaningful. The flattening of distribution gives us the opportunity to program narrower and narrower to interests. The narrower brands will inspire even greater loyalty.

Michael Hennessy: Our game is like the broadcaster did in the past: It’s to aggregate as much content as possible in as many ways to appeal to the broadest audience. The traditional broadcasters are not disappearing. We just want to deliver numbers to advertisers. We want to be huge, but we don’t want to be failures. And being a failure would come from thinking of content as a walled garden.

Brady Gilchrist: The market will dictate what it finds interesting.

Broadband and the end of the dinosaurs…

March 21, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

The explosion in broadband capacity is having a transformative impact on our world of content and connection similar to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago.
Hugo Award winning author and futurist Robert J. Sawyer offered this metaphor in his opening keynote speech at the ice07 conference in Toronto.

Sawyer told the audience, composed primarily of broadcasters and program producers that they can expect that change will only accelerate. The world has changed dramatically in the past 25 years. But as great as that change feels, we will experience a similar magnitude of change in the next 10 years. And change equal to that in the subsequent five years. And the next 2.5 years…

The future is 3D. The future is virtual reality. The future will eliminate the distinction between our online life and our real world life. The distinction in resolution of the online world will reach parity with the real world. And as it does, we will not distinguish between the two.

We will see the end of downloads. All content will stream. Storage will become virtually limitless.

We will see an enormous uplifting in the quality of the content produced by prosumers. They will take advantage of higher resolution, unlimited bandwidth and storage along with the tools that exist today to produce content that equals that which is currently produced by the studios and big networks.

We’re moving away from the big studio. We’re moving away from the big company. Companies will only be able to cope with the pace of change by breaking down the vertical silos.

As corporate producers find themselves competing with prosumer content that is virtually free, they will face the challenge of finding a way to monetize their own content.

Branding will be important in any attempt to do this. Content producers must raise awareness of their personal brand in a world in which the branding of aggregators like YouTube has been superimposed on the creators’ brand.

Traditional media companies will only be able to survive if they go beyond copying prosumer trends to imagine the next innovations, the next trends and move to try them before the prosumers do.

Independent and prosumer content producers will be in a struggle with large traditional companies. In an era in which the traditional economics have scarcity have been superseded by the economics of digital abundance, the large companies have lost their advantage over the independents and prosumers.

As both large and small producers struggle to succeed in this new world, the winners will be those who connect more. New connections will yield new ideas and new patterns. Traditional media must recognize this and accelerate their contact with the new prosumer and independent producers.

These will be the new corporate and production organisms that emerge in the new world much as man emerged after asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. The dawn of a new era.

Blogs and crises

March 9, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

The final panel at NewComm Forum featured Brian Oberkirch, Josh Hallett, Joel Richman, and David Parmet, on Managing crisis communications in the blogosphere.

Joel Richman led off the session with the case of PubSub, in which one of the company’s founders suprised the company’s management and his cofounder by announcing the imminent demise of the company on his personal blog. As a result of the post, virtually all of the key employees quit and gave up on the company. Richman and Parmet were consulting to the company at the time this happened.

So, what did they learn from this experience? What do you do if employees air dirty laundry into the blogosphere?

Josh Hallett argued that the blogosphere is a different medium, but that communications professionals should apply the set of experience and skills that they have built up in traditional media. The tried and true best practices will work in the blogosphere.

And what of accuracy in the emotional statements that rattle around the blogosphere in a crisis? Hallet suggests that the free monitoring tools allow communicators to pick up inaccuracies quickly. Search engines also support quick retrieval of original source articles and quotes in order to verify accuracy and establish context. Using these will enable a crisis manager to respond quickly to misinformation.

Hallett advises Corporate communicators to prepare to respond to potential crises by researching and bookmarking relevant entries on Wikipedia

Brian Oberkirch pointed out that the blogosphere enables communicators to listen into the conversation before a crisis. To identify opinion leaders and to understand the major beliefs and mood of the discussion. This foreknowledge will enable a crisis manager to enter into the discussion more effectively.

“It’s not that behaviours are different. It’s that the speed of the behaviours is accelerated enormously.” This is a real challenge for corporate communicators and management processes that are geared to the slower pace of traditional Mainstream Media.

How about Taco Bell’s recent experience with the consumer generated video of rats infesting a Manhattan store? Taco Bell responded initially with statements and traditional releases. It was clear that these did not match the visceral impact of the video. Finally, after five days, the company posted a response video on youTube. Unfortunately, the company’s response was a talking head video of a corporate manager speaking in corporatese. Which do you think was more compelling? The consumer generated video or the company response?

Josh Hallett suggested that “The social manifesto for blogging is forcing corporations and organizations to behave more responsibly.” Communications advisers should remember this and advise their clients to alter behaviour that might lead to crises.

Brian Oberkirch suggests the Slidell Hurricane Blog as an example of the potential for social media to play a positive role in crises. Oberkirch began this blog to share information on the status of friends affected by a hurricane. As time passed, the community began to share broader information and the Blog for a period became the primary source of information for people affected by the Hurricane.

Oberkirch also points out that in times of civil emergencies, text messaging may still be working when other media have failed.

Josh Hallett suggests that local emergency measures organizations should also maintain a list of the most prolific and most read blogs in their area. In the time of a crisis, these people may be helpful in distributing and amplifying information.

Brian Oberkirch suggests that crisis planners should be looking in the early hours of a crisis to identify the voices that are speaking out in the crisis. They may come from unlikely places. But when they do speak, they have the same access to an audience as anyone else.

One of the audience members pointed out that it is better to think about blogs as “opportunity communications” not crisis communications. There are many new avenues of communication and opportunities to connect with communities and concerned people, not only during the crisis but in advance of a crisis.

Joel: “Have a plan. A plan will allow you to act much more quickly. … You can do a lot to shape the conversation. You’re not going to be able to control the conversation. But you will be able to influence it.”

Josh: “Act more responsibly.”

Last word to Brian Oberkirch: “There is no magic bullet. There’s a lot of stuff out there and it will take a lot of work.”

Small business corporate culture fits social media

March 9, 2007 • Joseph Thornley • No Tags

I began my last morning at NewComm Forum with a session by Zane Safrit and John Cass on The importance of corporate culture to the success of social media programs.

Safrit is CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, a small business in the phone and web conferencing business.

Safrit indicated that CCU abandoned traditional advertising in favour of social media.

He saw cost of paid search engine marketing increasing substantially at a time that he was cutting prices and costs. So, they pulled out of traditional advertising, including pay per click on Google and Yahoo.

They did not make a considered entry into social media. Instead, they were driven by necessity. Safrit was looking for a way to convey the unique attribute of his brand – the company’s employees.

He came across Seth Godin and was impressed with the potential of blogging for having conversations with customers. He tried it and learned through experience “There is nothing that cuts through that clutter like a blog – like a CEO’s blog.”

Safrit characterizes his corporate culture as “a band of creative control freaks. … Our brand is that little bit of space between the customers and everyone in the company. … I’ll do anything I can to give them the tools they need. … What everybody began to understand is that for us to be successful when we come to work we need to communicate very well.”

The IT Department can be a problem for this type of program. But it is essential to ensure that IT serves the strategy and doesn’t try to set it.

Safrit began his blogging as a personal project. And he did it this way for about a year. He moved it into the company strategy only when he felt comfortable that it would work for the group.

He then proposed to each of the company’s eight employees that they begin blogging. And he encouraged and guided them in their efforts. Some found that it wasn’t for them. Others thrived. And as the social media took hold, Safrit made social media the focus of the company’s marketing

Now, the company’s online press room features their employee bloggers front and center. There are also RSS feeds for the company newsletter and the Safrit’s CEO blog.

CCU also uses a Wiki for internal collaboration and discussions. Safrit encourages everyone to contribute, freely and openly, to the discussion. And he posts his own ideas on the Wiki. And by doing this, he believes that he sets a standard that encourages employees to feel comfortable to communicate honestly. It’s taken about a year for people to begin to feel comfortable that they can participate in this way.

Safrit believes that training is very important in introducing blogging into a corporate environment. “You have to tell people how it fits into the overall plan at the same time as you help them to learn how to use it.”

“I want something back from my investment in this. What I want back is participation.”