July 2009
45 posts
Why Does The Music Industry Not Learn? - PSFK →
Short Version - PR, Marketing, Advertising, are about driving an action; purchase of the product. However, when awareness of the product happens notably in advance of legal availability of the product, people will steal it.
So, the entire music industry is dropping the ball on marketing and pr. As a result, they are blatantly encouraging piracy.
Very insightful, short, solid article. Click...
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Cloud Computing
My only issue with Cloud Computing is that it puts an absurd amount of power in the hands of the ISP. The same people who argue against net neutrality, who (in Canada) charge through the nose for mediocre service, who argue that owning cable means they should own the internet.
Do you really want access to all of your files, applications, work and art to be at the behest of the telcos?
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Magazines: Why Ad Pages Won't Ever Fully Return →
brandpluscontent:
“Marketers are also applying stricter tests to all their efforts and, influenced by our rising on-demand culture and economy, seeking faster and faster results. Jim Spanfeller, outgoing president and CEO of Forbes.com, feels this is what’s hurting magazines.
Digital media is increasing the demand for instant accountability, he said, even though it falls short in many ways...
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Demographic Targeting and 'Zoomer'.
In today’s Toronto Star, there’s an excellent article by Cathal Kelly called Moses Znaimer’s Second Act. Znaimer, the man who made City TV a force in Canadian media, is currently building a new empire focused at his own age group, that he has labelled ‘Zoomers’.
I will admit that if anyone could make the idea work, it’s Znaimer. He has a Steve Jobs-ian...
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Apple joins forces with record labels →
artistspaid:
Matthew Garrahan / Financial Times:
Apple is working with the four largest record labels to stimulate digital sales of albums by bundling a new interactive booklet, sleeve notes and other interactive features with music downloads, in a move it hopes will change buying trends on its online iTunes store.
The talks come as Apple is separately racing to offer a portable,...
Housekeeping Note:
Attention Industry now has comments, and a snazzier theme.
Now slightly less pre-alpha.
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Social Media: Reducing Conversational Fluff.
Social media has made it possible for the last decade or so, to inform my friends, en masse, about big events in my life. I have said, dozens of times, “did you see my blog post on (insert subject)” allowing me to jump in to the actual conversation I want to have, rather than spending precious time with people I care about giving out background information.
The same principle is in...
Cox and Turner Measure VOD Ads →
brandpluscontent:
“Our work with Turner demonstrates that consumers will view on demand content, with advertising, and that this exposure can be measured.”
The key word here is “exposure” — which unfortunately doesn’t mean people necessarily watched it.
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NYT: Artists Find Backers as Labels Wane →
This is why it’s beneficial and wonderful to work in an industry in flux. It comes down to the core offering, the business model, and sticking to what can / should work. It’s hard to remember that not too long ago, the model of the music business was: take a risk on developing a huge pile of artists, the few outliers / successes will subsidize the entire A&R operation.
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Apple posts best non-holiday quarter revenue and... →
tanya77:
mikehudack:
soupsoup:
Recession? What recession?
Being sufficiently awesome has, historically, made recessions less of an issue.
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Narratives and Communication.
I gave an impromptu talk last night, at Refresh Events in Toronto. I may have been enticed to the front of the room with the promise of free beer, but in all honesty just watching others speak about their passions, and the lessons and challenges they’ve faced, got me up and talking about the transition I made from studying English Literature, to studying (and now working in)...
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Wired: You Can Re-Invent Yourself Online. →
Wired (unintentionally?) examines the thin line between personal branding, and being an artificial persona.
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“Wal-Mart’s announcement of its new sustainability index marks the dawning of the...”
– Wal-Mart Exposes the De-Value Chain - Leading Green - HarvardBusiness.org (via chartreuse)
I’m both impressed and disturbed that Wal-Mart has decided to take on sustainability the same way they took on efficiency - by bullying suppliers to bend to their whim, or go out of business after...
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Neat Brandweek article about commercial brands... →
tba:
(via staff)
Very good points about the specific value proposition of Tumblr vs. other online publishing services.
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Rock Band opens track creation/sales to home... →
Pay close attention: this isn’t another way for independent or up-and-coming artists to sell music.
It’s a way to sell an interactive, music-based experience.
If it was just a way to download music through an Xbox, it wouldn’t be nearly as innovative, or nearly as impressive.
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Microsoft Hits Apple Where it Hurts →
heyitsnoah:
I’m not entirely sure I believe this story, but apparently at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference this year COO Kevin Turner told a story of someone from Apple asking Microsoft to stop running their laptop hunter ads:
And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey,...
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Greenwashing and Social Responsibility
This morning, I got water and a croissant instead of my usual coffee. The water available at my usual cafe was FIJI, and I commented that I felt bad, as the water has a huge negative environmental impact.
Impressively, FIJI is tracking commentary of it’s brand on Twitter, and responded to me a few hours later, with information on how the company is now carbon negative.
This...
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Social Media Relations (on Twitter) Ex: FIJI
joncrowley: tried water instead of coffee this morning. i feel guilty that it was fiji water (absurd environmental impact) and already miss caffeine.
FIJIWATER: @joncrowley Actually, FIJI has a very extensive green program. We're carbon negative http://is.gd/1Ba2U and provide clean water to Fijians.
joncrowley: @FIJIWATER I guess I'm just not 100% comfortable with shipping water for such a great distance. Thanks for the info, though.
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Quantifying Recommendations.
Facebook’s friend recommendations have actually gotten useful, adding the number of mutual friends, and the nature of your connection (past attendees of the same schools, etc) to the Suggestions panel on your home page.
Imagine if every service did this - rather than saying ‘people who like x also like y’ or ‘we recommend z’, say ‘75% of people who purchase x...
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Automation and Social Media - Peashoot's Audience... →
Is this a good idea?
Social media always faces the same issue - business value comes from scalability, and actual social value comes from true personal contact. For those who won’t click the link, Peashoot’s Audience Builder feature (based on my incomplete understanding reading the documentation) helps you search for specific keywords or phrases is tweets, then set up an auto reply...
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“The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They’re...”
– zengestrom.com: Why some social network services work and others don’t Or: the case for object-centered sociality (via csessums) (via tba)
This is related, in my mind, to Hugh MacLeod’s idea of the Social Object.
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Watching one of the MSFT comparison shopping...
Given the current status of the economy, it makes sense to point out that your OS is available on more mid-priced computers.
That said, it might be an idea to mention something positive about your product, other than the price. The impression being made is that if you can’t afford a Mac, settle for a PC.
Especially when your commercials feature lines like “We can’t get a Mac...
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Two Reminders.
1) People don’t mind being used, they mind being discarded. (from Chris Matthews’ book Life’s a Campaign)
2) If a business model is based on ad revenue, the product isn’t the content, it’s the people consuming the content.
If a company, or industry is based on advertising, it’s important to remember that you are using the people who consume your content. ...
Yesterday I Learned
That you people love Voltron.
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Ads are not Enough.
I’m convinced the rise of the internet (and related technologies) didn’t reduce the effectiveness of advertising. Other than the decline caused by increased choice, we’re dealing with the fact that we can really see the immediate effect of an ad, when it’s placed online.
We aren’t learning that advertising online isn’t effective in 2k9. We’re learning...
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Voltron is the Answer.
The solution isn’t one big idea. It also isn’t a hundred small ideas.
The solution is Voltron.
A pile of small ideas that build to a single, cohesive whole. Sentences and paragraphs that combine to form a single narrative, despite having individual meaning.
Be Voltron. Combine your ideas to form something greater.
(This is an old, established, comfortable idea. But I felt...
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“When a system becomes popular the greedy will game it and social media is no...”
– Scott Berkun, “Calling bullshit on social media” (via somethingchanged)
The Generation M Manifesto - Umair Haque →
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More Augmented Reality + Social Networks →
mikearauz:
(Check out my face-recognition concept from June 22nd here.) This is a new concept, and I’m predicting that we will see in the near-ish future. The basic functionality of this is similar…
And yet again, Mike Arauz proposes great idea. I would use this. So would you.
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“There exists a huge generation gap between those who care about and know what...”
– NPR: Do Record Labels Still Matter? (via gcn) (via chartreuse)
Fun side effect of everyone being able to publish, is that the publisher becomes irrelevant if they aren’t doing something extraordinary (not the artist, the publisher).
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The Intersection of Game Mechanics and Marketing.
The second marketers “discover” tumblr, those of you with serious tumblarity will be pitched / spammed so hard you will walk funny for weeks.
I understand (very well, I think) the value of introducing game mechanics to blogging. Tumblarity feeds the addiction to positive reinforcement that drives people to become power users. But, it’s also an influence / user activity ranking...
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Ad Fail - Doublepitstochesty.com →
Just so we’re clear, I was not saying anything positive about this campaign. In fact, when these ads play before a film starts, I lean over to my friends and say “This is something to remember, next time someone mentions the artistic validity of their advertising career. Some guy spent weeks designing and building ‘doublepitstochesty.com’.”
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Against the Grain.
Axe is hardly something I would use, and the marketing is anything but tasteful.
And it sells.
We could argue why it sells, and there are many reasons beyond the use of sex in the marketing, but the number one reason in my mind is simple: every other deodorant product on the market highlights the product as a method to avoid sweat, or body odour, or (to put it simply) a socially awkward...
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“We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter...”
– From the recent Twitter blog post on trademarking ‘Tweet’. Presented without comment.
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brands and remixing.
When consumer start using your brand or logo without your permission - not by counterfeiting, but by using it to ascribe meaning and values to objects that you do not, and would not produce - you’ve created something of significant cultural value.
If your response to this is to call a lawyer, you may have missed the point.
“Information wants to be ad-supported?”
– Rob Walker brings some much-needed art to delicious links.
Linkpile (via heyitsnoah)
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On Metrics.
Measurement is a weapon.
The decline in advertising is at least in part due to the impact of meaningful metrics. Comparing Nielsen TV ratings to clickthrough information and demographic breakdowns for online advertising is like comparing a StarTAC with an iPhone. All this information has done, in my opinion, is expose an inconvenient truth - most advertising is not as impactful as anyone would...
Consumed - Remixed Messages - NYTimes.com →
The oft-remixed ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster, and the shifting perception of history and meaning.
“… as we think about creating public spaces, what’s the meeting point for our...”
– “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online,” Danah Boyd (via somethingchanged) (via tba)
danah boyd is a genius, FYI.
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The Value of Decay: My Old Blog.
The Broken Gentleman, my old website, has been completely static for the last month, other than updating links, and a few visits to older content. Every month, I get my google analytics email, and recognize that, until recently, it was a living thing.
It’s gone from a place of thought and action to something of a mausoleum, keeping a safe home for the ideas that will never go anywhere,...