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.
The one thing harder than creating an online brand is leveraging an existing one to do so. Conventional wisdom holds that the more channels in which a consumer experiences your brand, the better. Maybe so for retailers. But for media companies, the task is more complex. The web is not just another delivery channel - it is an entirely new product platform with its own house rules for attracting audiences and making money. And that is more of a headache than an aspirin for companies with longstanding mastheads to defend.
Naomi Klein notwithstanding, Brands are back on the agenda. Once you abandon the mid twentieth century view of brands as just a cynical megamix of product benefits, you are open to musing about a more interesting question. What are people actually buying when they knowingly pay a premium for a brand name?
