Context is King

Two counter culture youth icons. One has 100m members. The other 82m viewers. The first is transforming the online promotion of music, and just got a fat $900m revenue guarantee from Google. The other established video as the ultimate vehicle for music promotion, and even after a quarter century, continues to seduce big brand advertisers. In the showdown between MySpace and MTV, its tempting to call the round on the numbers. But there is a more interesting comparison to be made.

Both MySpace and MTV got their start in music and ended up in very different places. In the early days MTV almost exclusively played music videos. Now, in between urban reality programming, adult cartoons and lifestyle features you would be hard pressed to find one. Similarly for MySpace. Bands and fans formed the majority of the early fare. Now MySpace is a platform for anyone with something to say about anything at all. But strangely enough, both brands take exactly the same approach to selling advertising. We represent the MTV/MySpace generation - they say.

And they do. At least for now. After all, the one thing harder than being cool is staying that way. Dig up an early eighties photo of MTV's first VJs, and you would be forgiven for stifling a shudder. Like a grown-up's idea of what might be hip - the first generation of screen talent are terminally at odds with the edgy personalities and programming that define the MTV brand today. Things change. The same may ultimately be said of MySpace. With a cadre of the world's early adopter teens signed up and 'friending' each other to death, the MySpace brand currently has the zeitgeist pulse under its finger. But what happens in five years, when the teens become twenty somethings, and god forbid, their parents start using the network for dating?

But that's the magic and mayhem of social networks - best summed up as the difference between products and platforms. Media companies have traditionally been geared up to produce the former. Newspapers, DVDs, TV shows, or channel brands like Discovery, ESPN or MTV. If you have enough talented producers, programmers and marketers, you can move with the times with engaging, high rating fare. If not, the times move past you. Platforms are radically different. You play host, not dictator. That means being prepared to deal with the zany, illegal and inappropriate as well as all the stuff you secretly hoped that people would contribute. Media companies, meet your audience.

If you think that's scary, imagine how advertisers feel. Sure there are clever algorithms that match advertising with on page text references, but its a brave marketing custodian who lets their billion dollar brand casually hang out in a world where content runs free. That's why despite the fact that MySpace, YouTube, and the Web2.0 bratpack are getting so much media hype at the moment, their 25 year old sibling still has one big advantage - context. MTV might have lost some of its cutting edge with their audience, but at least brand marketers know what they are getting in for. Ironically, its no so much about controlling material - as have some degree of confidence about the environment in which an ad might appear. Call it editorial coherence if you will.

The best example of editorial coherence at work is not television but magazines. I don't mean magazines as a glossy product - but the magazine business model of identifying a targeted audience and uniting focused editorial, specific advertisers and interested readers in an integrated community. Coherence is not the same as control. Its about having a defined vector that everyone who contributes, reads or advertisers implicitly accepts. Of course, these days the most authentic way of achieving that goal is not to hire a fascist editor, but to turn moderation over to the community. Consider Slashdot - the infamous technology media community. Stories and comments were entirely moderated, rated and ranked by readers. Literally through the act of consumption, the product became more useful for everyone.

One way that content specialisation will be advanced is through fragmentation of existing social networks. Part of this is simply users getting sick of being bothered by people they don't want to hang out with. Already on MySpace you will notice many profiles being locked to private, or people setting their ages at 14 to avoid turning up in general searches. However the other powerful driver of fragmentation will be the greater utility users will derive from being part of a more focused network where the content and community more closely match their interests. Over the next eighteen months, don't be surprised if a number of brands, egged on by eager agencies, try their hand at creating their own micro networks. With varying degrees of success. Case in point is the invitation only soccer community created by Nike and Google.

Don't get me wrong. No one is going to want register repetitively to individual social networks, and go to the trouble of uploading their photos, videos and personalised pages a thousand times. Sites like MySpace may end up abstracting into a basic container for your personal information and connections, and allow consumers to emigrate to other more targeted networks using their original profile as a kind of tourist visa. These targeted networks themselves may grow out of the groups functionality that exist on many community sites at the moment.

Unlike paid search, Brand advertising has always been at least three fifths black magic. You can draw as many brand pyramids as you like, but at some point you have to simply trust your overpaid marketing director, overworked creative, and oversold host medium. Google's great invention over the last few years was putting confidence back into the response marketing game. Now the mission for emerging media platforms is creating appropriate promotional environments for brand advertisers similar to the reliable media products they once and continue to utilise.

Rewrite your marketing mantras. Forget content. Context is king.

Comments

[Aitch]

Nice work Mike.

But isn't the big picture more about a good "ten year old" push - towards customisation*?

Cutomisation and fracturing of the exsisting communities will continue to happen and therefore I think your take on "Magazine style" bespoke communications is the real insight here. Especially in a market that has tried for over ten years to kill print off. I would go so far as to argue, that this customised nature of magazines will be it's life-line for a long time to come.

Why there's even P.R. companies inside Second Life now.

*that would be customization in the U.S.

[John Pospisil]

Great to read an article by someone who understands the dynamics between so-called new and old media.

I wonder whether the MTV/MySpace generation is actually two different generations. I know MTV is trying to position itself in the social networking space, but MySpace is so new, so different, that it engenders a completely different mindset.

[Chas. Porter]

Nice insight, well written. Your comment about MySpace becoming a basic container for personal info and connections while enabling emigration to targeted networks is interesting, but I wonder whether that's really possible. It seems to me that the social networks we've seen so far all work under the basic premise of locking the user into real estate controlled by the network (witness the recent deal between MySpace and Adobe to disable the external linking function in Flash widgets on the MySpace domain). The MySpace business model is ad-driven, so keeping an audience in one central location keeps them alive; I don't see why they'd want to enable emigration unless they control a significant number of targeted networks as well, and that's starting to sound less like a social network and more like, god forbid, a portal. However, the container concept is very interesting, especially when you move the business model from advertising to a specialized social network with a marketplace and transactions.

[Johnny Zircon]

Good point - perhaps because the central dynamic in networks is communication rather than content - for a useful discussion see
Content is not king, A. M. Odlyzko. First Monday 6(2) (February 2001), http://firstmonday.org/.
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.communications2.pdf
This is well worth a read

[Mark Dodgson]

Mike

Very interesting article and you are absolutely correct in terms of context as it relates to advertisers however in the current environment. However in the long term simple personalisation of relevant delivered content will eventually force advertisers to change tack and in the process offer consumers so much more. There are some basic building blocks that need to be in place, functional service – global content licensing system – personalisation for the masses with a simple but effective interface, however in Australia inexpensive true broadband is the main long term stumbling block.

I believe that ultimately personalized content is king, but currently distribution is the key.

In Australia for “Free To Air” media companies
With a high migrant base and under-funded local content production, the option of tuning out of local free to air channels and into either mother country programs in a familiar language or with humour that the listener can relate to from childhood is appealing. The rest of us will be creating virtual streamed TV stations supported by advertising (as currently happens very successfully in on-line radio).

When digital TV is taken up in reasonable numbers with true broadband connectivity, then the opportunity will be there for the creation of a simple personalisation service that will allow a large percentage of consumers to tune out of free to air entirely.

It’s a 1 to 1 thing … we really want to watch stuff that we would enjoy (but we don’t necessarily know about !) For some groups of consumers peer pressure will still be very important but the ability to watch when it’s convenient to you, and being offered suggested content that matches your personal profile is where we are heading.

Fortunately for the local media groups, Telstra through its co-ownership of Foxtel is also loathe to enable local consumers to easily access foreign content and consumers will probably have to wait for the true deployment of a non-partisan wireless operator that can manage high throughput … but this is some years away.

In the interim an option for free to air stations may be to prepare by commissioning category killer content which can be exported to create a replacement revenue stream before their traditional advertising streams are cut off. Disintermediation of media companies is no different from that of finance providers to the masses over the last 10 years, new upstarts will need to be successful before the mainstream will move to a less familiar model.

The wider implications for other media sectors is also profound.

Music / Video, Radio and even Newspaper groups are all struggling with the download and the blog environments.

For music vendors
The new nokia service is the first major commercial step in that direction , which is where the “Just Mix It” service is headed http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1077784

For radio
Already there are excellent personalized streamed radio stations

For newspapers
The blog is now a very powerful medium, perceived to be less biased (or at the very least less subtly biased) and therefore more credible.

Myspace is already proving to be a more interesting place for millions of consumers to be than in front of the TV and they realize that the real revenues will come from advertising not from the music downloads

The problem for these groups is that without control of distribution, you're just another player in the marketplace who is struggling to be seen as an independent.

[Laurel Papworth]

We're going to have to agree to disagree here, Mike. If I read the last paragraph correctly, you are advocating sponsored networks to push more advertising by brand marketers down the members throats. That simply no longer works. Gen Y have re-wired their DNA to switch off from advertising and switch on to information gathering. Company branding was soooooo industrial age - this is the consumer branding in the information and response age. I recommend you read Gonzo Marketing by the guy that edited The ClueTrain Manifesto, it will give great insight in how to avoid attempts at branding sponsored social networks and move across to underwritten online communities.

I know I don't need to direct you to The Long Tail by Chris Anderson - there is a whole chapter (The New Tastemakers) in there about CONTEXT ... NOT CONTENT ...IS KING - taken from a quote by Rob Reid of Listen.com. Please ackowledge your sources in your blog - it's a cardinal sin in the blogosphere not to! Plus it makes me cross! :p While I don't agree with everything in that book, the chapter on Google and how they have taken response marketing out of the hands of agencies and put it in the hands of the little guy is very good.

Oh, and FYI -there are a number of press releases showing that since the middle of the year, more than 1/2 of MySpace members are 35 or older. See this one http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1019

I'm teaching a marketing course at the Uni of Sydney Centre for Continuing Education at the end of February 07 called Engaging Social Networks using Web 2.0 (blogs and wikis). Love to have you along! :)
http://www.cce.usyd.edu.au/cce/course.do?id=000223&course=009295

[Hugo]

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[ClubPenguinCheats]

Sites like MySpace may end up abstracting into a basic container for your personal information and connections, and allow consumers to emigrate to other more targeted networks using their original profile as a kind of tourist visa.

[Red Sole Shoes]

It's fun.Very worth to read.

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