INTEGRATED MEDIA

Integrated media is the use of all forms of media, traditional television, online communities, video games, and YouTube to engage consumers. Advertisers and media content creators will have to use all forms of media to present content that consumers can manipulate and engage with in order to keep consumers attention.

A key examples include:

The Matrix, where different pieces of information are conveyed through different mediums including: three live action films, a series of animated shorts, two collections of comic book stories, and several video games. There is no single source for all the information around the Matrix universe.

Heroes had producers writing blogs, a Heroes’ Wiki, Webisodes, and an online campaign for “Create your own Hero” where audiences voted to create a new Hero which later appeared on the Television show.

All perfect examples of leveraging multiple media channels and consumer input to drive content and engage audiences.

Youtube & the media industry

The idea for this post came from the question:' Is social media such as youtube beneficial to media companies in anyway, i.e.
While it's providing viewers alternate forms of entertainment and taking eyeballs away from mass media to user generated content, is it in anyway helping large scale established and large scale content producers?

I explored this topic a little and found the following:

The highest viewed video on you tube UK is British pop star Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love- as on the 24^th of November, 2008 its been viewed over 75 million times. However eventhough the record company, the artist or any TV station hasn’t directly made any money on these views, has this taken revenue away from them? Have the 75 million views have actually taken business away from the music company? It doesn’t seem like it. Leona Lewis is by far the highest selling X factor artist with over 2 million albums sold until now. It was also claimed to be the ‘worlds fastest selling downloadable single after it was downloaded over 50,000 times within 30 minutes of becoming available after the end of X Factor 2007.’ All of this despite year on year shrinking sales of music in the physical format and increasing in peer to peer music sharing on the internet. It seems that though youtube might not be making Google too much money its certainly good for the business of other media companies.

Is it driving people away from traditional 'mass produced' media ... or towards it?

Reference:

• www. youtube.com
• http://www.xfactorodds.co.uk/leona-lewis.html
  

The Broadband Effect

In this digital age, the ‘always-on’, high-speed aspects of broadband Internet are having a profound effect on our daily lives. Its impact on the media industry is transformative. Empowered by high speed broadband, consumers are increasingly blending the internet with other media. Viewers are customizing their media experience by choosing content- music, information, programmes and movies, more to their interests and tastes. They watch the big game on TV and catch up on all the stories about their favourite sport stars on the internet. They hear a headline on the radio and go online for details. At the end of a TV show they log on to the internet to try and find out more about the next episode. It’s an integrated experience where people explore their interests and indulge their passions through multiple channels. Yahoo and Media edge in a research paper issued in 2006 called this “Media Meshing.”
Alan Wutrzel, President, Research / media development, NBC Universal reinstated this phenomenon, when earlier this year he stated, 'I don't think the average consumer will consume video in the next five years in any one way. I think they'll consume it in many, many different ways. It's just going to be how that all gets proportioned. Some people will still spend more time and energy going to the advertiser supported video. Others will spend more time going online. Others will spend more time downloading and paying for it.'
For media companies integration of media and targeted marketing is imperative. Just as consumers mesh their experience across media, media companies also need to mesh their content across channels. Media neutrality is essential.
Media companies therefore need to use the internet and Web 2.0 as an opportunity to work closely with viewers and jointly develop new content.The proilferation of broadband and the explosion of Web 2.0 have also brought about a movement of viewers users generating their own content and sharing it for free. Traditionally media houses have been in charge of creating and publishing all the content that we view, using resources and channels that either they own or have access to. New content is controlled and created by a few.
Today, to create and load up a video on Youtube viewers don’t need large resources and the channels of distribution are free. Control for creation and distribution of new content is in the hands of millions. Where is the publisher or media company in all of this? Millions of people are creating and sharing new content with others across the world and studios, music labels and media companies are largely out of the loop.
Media companies therefore need to use the internet give viewers the necessary platform and the tools to create higher quality new content – provide viewers access to the creative and technological capabilities of the studio and thus generate new content which the viewers themselves would help promote.
The impact of the internet on the media business is an unfolding phenomenon that could potentially generate value for everyone.

References:

• 'Its a broadband life', Yahoo and Media edge research paper, 2005
• 'The future of Television', PBS http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/future-of-television_home/
  

Heroes in web2.0 generation

Do you remember The Matrix trilogy? I believe it was equivalent to Star War of this generation. Anyway, the point I would like to make here is Animatrix. I remember back in 2003 when I talked to my friends after I watched Matrix Reloaded that I did not understand some part. It felt like something was missing. One of my friends said "Did you watch the Animatrix?" Apparently, it was 8 short online animation that supposed to be a prequel of the movie and the connection between Part 1 and Part 2. I was not really a big geek of The Matrix, so of course I had not heard about it before. There are actually more interactive media related to the film as mentioned in the blog earlier. The point is the production company tried to integrated all sort of media to capture the target audiences by linking the movie to online website.

Now, what does this concept has to do with future of television?

I have watched a Sci-fi drama, Heroes, since I move to Manchester, and this year I find that they began to use web2.0 extensively; from Greg Beeman's (director & producer) weekly blog to Heroes wiki to Create-your-Heroes and many more. Beeman's blogs are posted on a weekly basis on the official website, giving comments on production of the current episode and some spoiler to the upcoming one. Heroes Wiki is a wiki site that contains all the information of Heroes such as characters and their abilities and behind the scene production.

On July 2008, Heroes introduced webisode, the trilogy online series that contains new character that does not yet appear on TV series. And in the beginning of Novermber 2008, the second webisode was released. This time it features a new character, Santiago, who is a product of Heroes' campaign last year - Create Your Hero. The show asks audience to vote on many aspects of the new hero e.g. appearance, background, and ability of a new hero. The vote lasted approximately a year and after more than one million votes were casted, Santiago became . There are many more interactive offers from Heroes that keep the TV show going as well as winning online viewers' heart.

This may be one possibility of the direction of TV in the future. The production house can keep the link between online and TV in order to keep the traffic in both means of media. Heroes certainly keep up with the trend of web2.0 and it seems to pay off well. This concept is used widely on sevelral shows from NBC and expected to be more in the near future.



Reference:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/New-Hero-Chosen-Fans-Create/story.aspx?guid=%7B90D4AB79-B200-4989-BD97-217A90EDFF61%7D

http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/create_your_hero/

http://heroeswiki.com/Create_Your_Hero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_(TV_series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animatrix

http://gregbeeman.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html

Television Disrupted?

Nightly Business Report ran a series on the Future of Television in Febuary thsi year. The series was split into four parts:

• 
  
  The Digital Revolution


• 
  
  Producer-Consumer


• 
  
  Broadcaster Strategy


• 
  
  Cutting-Edge Technology

THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION: Scott Gurvey, the NBR correspondent observes how television viewing has moved from 'watching what the networks wanted us to watch' to a much more descriptive term- it's everywhere, online, on our phones, and the networks are jostling for space and losing more often than not. According to the Nielsen Company, average broadcast prime time viewership has fallen from 45 percent of households in 1985 to 28 percent in 2007, in the US. Next year, broadcasters face another challenge. On February 17, 2009, virtually all TV stations in the US are scheduled to turn off their analog transmitters. That will leave broadcast television a digital affair. Shelly Palmer, Author of "TELEVISION DISRUPTED" states that "the transition from analog to digital is going to devastate in a way that I don't think many people appreciate."

PRODUCER-CONSUMER: Anyone heard of the term midday snacking? It's used to refer to mini breaks or lunch time breaks that professionals take during the day, to watch videos online that are of interest to them. A hugely popular website riding high on this trends(or did they bring into fashion?) is http://www.politicallunch.com/ . ROBERT MILLIS, CO-CREATOR, POLITICALLUNCH.COM says, "we like to offer five minutes where people who are interested in politics, but maybe not obsessed the way that we are, can get caught up with the election news and go on with their day. They can have a sandwich during lunch, watch us and move on." To this Gurvey observes, a viewer who catches up at politicallunch or any of the web- casting sites may be less inclined to tune into the news and entertainment on broadcast TV. The availability of low-cost equipment for shooting and editing has made the television production process accessible. Anyone with a $50 web cam can make television and you don't need your own web-casting Internet site. Distributing television is now as simple as burning a DVD or posting the video to a free web-sharing site. Youtube is the best known.

Scott Kessler, Internet Media Analyst, S&P says, "Right now, a lot of the content that youtube has is user-generated content. And frankly, a lot of "Fortune" 500 type companies are not necessarily so comfortable with providing advertising and marketing messages that are going to be embedded or alongside what I would characterize as lower quality or including content that is more questionable type content." However that hasn't deterred some of the big players like Microsoft to dabble in television.

BROADCASTER STRATEGY: Alan Wurtzel of NBC Universal, says that an average consumer will consume video in many different ways. What remains to be seen is how that gets proportinoed.

Other broadcasters as well as cable channels which produce original programming, are experimenting with alternate distribution channels for their content. This has increased tensions between the content providers and distributors. And the content providers and the creators, the writers, actors directors and other creative talent who want a piece of the revenue no matter what distribution channels are used.

Al Lieberman, director of the entertainment, media and technology program at NYU, says broadcast executives he talks to are embattled. He says no one is going to give up their grounds. and walk away from these highly successful albeit declining shares in network television. Analysts say broadcasters will now sell TV-plus-web distribution as a package to advertisers.

CUTTING -EDGE TECHNOLOGY: Details on this will be discussed at lenght in other post.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/future-of-television_home/

TV, Internet, and Marketing

With the growing use and importance of online media, marketers have a great opportunity because they can be a lot closer to their consumers. Marketers can listen to what the consumers have to say through blogs, YouTube, and other Internet resources. It is something that wasn’t available before and marketers had to use market research, but now they can just see how consumers are responding to their brand first hand; they can out a face or at least a user name on stats. It also means, however, that they have less control over their brand. Before, they could focus on advertising on TV as the dominant media, and be sure that their audience would accept the message intended. But now brand managers don’t have that much control over their brands; they cannot control how consumers experience the brand. Marketers don’t own their brand anymore; it’s been hijacked by the consumer, but perhaps it is not so bad to let the consumer hijack the brand.

As a result, marketers are now forced to seek non-traditional media to market the brands. TV is losing importance to Internet. The good news is that non-traditional media costs a lot less; the bad news is that it is marketing has to be a lot more creative to make an impact.

Consumers now want to be engaged and the Internet has made it possible. Consumers identify themselves with the brand and want to get involved; they will have to be allowed to shape the brand and endorse it. There is a tremendous opportunity for companies to build a closer, ongoing relationship with the consumer.

Brand managers will need to let go off control, embrace uncertainty, and accept the fact that the market has the ultimate say; they cannot control how the consumer experiences the brand. After all, marketing is about giving consumers what they want.

Source: Wippenfurth, 2005. Brand Hijack: Marketing without Marketing.

Experience is the new reality

With the growing accessibility of internet, contents such as TV program, radio show, news, magazines, and etc can be found online. Some of them are legal. Some breached copyrights law. Moreover, major content producers also move toward online contents. Some companies even close down their physical company to run full time online.

Consumers can choose to follow their own interest, and not only that they can become the producer themselves. The concept of prosumer where the role of consumers and producers merge becomes widely recognised. Tools such as blogs, Youtube, Flickr, and Wikipedia become the most influential tools.

The following clip "Prometeus: The future of Media" by Casaleggio Associati shows what has happened so far and the idea of what may happen in the future.

It may seem ridiculous at the moment, but the possibility of something similar to this can happen. I do not think that it will happen as fast as they predicted because in many part of the world, internet speed and access do not allow consumers to fully enjoy the benefit of this media technology. However, to those developed countries where internet penetration rate reaches nearly 100%, the future is closer.

However, toward the end of the video, it mentions that experience is the new reality. Internet can replicate the five senses in the virtual world. Do we want the entertainment in the future to be virtual reality? We do not have to actually do it, but anything can be done through the internet? I cannot imagine how can someone enjoy virtual reality, but who am I to say? May be in the future it will be normal to just click a button and feel like you are sipping a cocktail on the sunny beach in Thailand.