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A few days back, Nick Denton of Gawker fame issued a new proclamation to the world which identified 7 key drivers that will define the future of their media brand.

1. The power of the scoop- getting a big story first can change your brand
2. Aggregate or die- you've got to be out there on Twitter and Facebook
3. Demonstrate a rounded personality- more than the gutter
4. The web is a visual medium
5. The growth of video ads- that's where the money is
6. Appointment programing- TV gets tune-in impact
7. Gawker is a branding vehicle- it's a way to sell yourselves to advertisers

Denton concluded..

If the model sounds like TV, that is no accident. There is no future in low-end web advertising, at least not for a media company with any aspirations. We will offer a larger canvas for both our editors and advertisers; and pair their offerings in the way that the web has so far failed and TV has done so well."

It seems amazing that after decades of the internet trying so hard to become a new medium, it's turning into the media that once was its supposed enemy.

The big question here is if all media companies with any aspiration want to be like TV- what do TV companies want to be when they finally grow up?


Posted by Ed Cotton A nice visual from the recent Ofcom UK report on the media industry and consumption of media. This visual looks at the typical daily consumption of media and shows it as a series of peaks and valleys over the course of a typical day.



Some observations:

1. Social media communication happens all day from dawn to well beyond dusk
2. Voice communication doesn't happen much past 10pm
3. TV dominates the evening, but there's also a lot of other media consumption peaking at the same time suggesting multitasking and a huge opportunity to integrate commercial messaging
4. Radio and print have bursts- very early AM and evening


Posted by Ed Cotton Everyone knows that HBO is the standout brand in the world of television, but what yardsticks does it use to protect its brand and maintain its lead.

Vanity Fair spent some time with Michael Lombardi to understand the secrets of the network's success, based on the article, here are HBO's rules for success.

1. Work with the best:

“We really have the good fortune or the smarts to do business with the right people,” he says, “because, as much credit as we’d like to take for those nominations, they really reflect the talent we do business with.”

2. It’s all about the writing:

“We start with an unmitigated respect for writers and the written word. You can talk to any film or television writer and hear their experiences both in the big screen and smaller screen universe, and they’ll give repeated examples where they feel like their voice got muzzled, muffled, muddled by input, rather than supported. What we’re looking for is writers who have a distinctive voice, a unique perspective, a strong story-telling sense, to let them do their best work.”

3. HBO isn't like everyone else:

We’re not a place that develops by consensus or by committee… That’s why we don’t ‘focus group’ our shows. That’s just not the business we’re in.... We’re not looking to be shows that get the biggest number of eyeballs in the world, we’re not selling ad space.”

4. Stay ahead of your competition:

We’re not a place that develops by consensus or by committee… That’s why we don’t ‘focus group’ our shows. That’s just not the business we’re in.... We’re not looking to be shows that get the biggest number of eyeballs in the world, we’re not selling ad space.”

5. Quality is everything:

in essence, the HBO formula could probably be boiled down to, “It’s the Script, Stupid.” Or as Lombardo more eloquently put it: “The first mantra here has always been quality ... not number of eyeballs, not the flashiest show. Quality. And that’s held us in good stead.”

Posted by Ed Cotton It's been a long time since the very mention of Apple to clients generated the response of "niche player". The company has become an 800lb gorilla and is crushing other corporate monoliths that step in its way. The biggest casualties over the past 10 years have been Sony and more recently, Nokia; giant corporations with huge levels of brand awareness that are currently suffering from a serious lack of dynamism.

Both organizations are seemingly desperate for creative thinking that can help re-energize their withering franchises.

Sony has a couple of bets placed in the key areas of 3-D TV and is targeting $11.3 billion in 3-D related sales by 2013. Sony basically controls this world from broadcast outwards. It's morphing the now successful Playstation Network into a fully blown multi-media entity that goes way beyond its gaming roots. The company sees it as a way to sell everything from networked devices to content for the network. This will become even more of a challenge, since its arch rival Apple is now poised to enter the space.

The company's music division is also struggling adapting to a changing world and is opening itself up to a host of new ideas. It recently signed a deal with American Idol's Simon Cowell, recently helped some authors complete a sell-out stadium tour and is acting as a cultural consultant for one of Argentina's provinces.

Nokia is just reeling from Apple's onslaught and although the brand has huge levels of recognition and market share outside the US, it's starting to see Apple and Google as a considerable threat to its business. The company has a new head of Mobile Solutions, who made his task very clear on a blog post.

"Yesterday was the first day in my new job. I’m fortunate to say that I must have one of the most exciting jobs in the business. As head of Mobile Solutions, it’s my aim to ensure Nokia stays as the market and intellectual leader in creating the digital world. I’m under no illusions; it’s no small task.

Over the coming months, we’ll be advancing current projects and working to simplify the way we work in order to deliver products and services faster, and with a laser focus on quality.

I am committed, perhaps even obsessed, with getting Nokia back to being number one in high-end devices. Achieving this will require performance and efforts over and above the norm. This is a role I’ve personally been preparing for over the last 20 years. We have all the assets — including R&D and product development - at our disposal under one roof - to produce killer smartphones and market-changing mobile computers."

These legacy companies are going to have a tough time turning their business around because of the pace of the forces that are against them.

Twenty years ago, it might have been an easier task to re-position and bring a corporate giant back from the brink, but today it's that much tougher. The companies are so much bigger, so generating massive change inside an organization is almost impossible and then there's the technological landscape that's constantly shifting.

Both Sony and Nokia stood on the sidelines as their businesses shifted from hardware to software and were incapable of change because they lacked the core skills required. 

The only way these guys will survive is by creating open cultures that encourage more risk taking and experimentation. Having success in the outlying areas will shows insiders the possibilities and become infectious.

Product and service excellence will be mandatory and then there's the small issue of brand. Both these brands are in the fashion business and have to recognize they need to re-inject the magic that surrounds their products; the products have to "wow" which makes marketing's task that much easier, it just has to cleverly amplify the good news. In recent years, both brands have been guilty of over-promoting products that simply can't live up to the hype.

One open opportunity for both brands is to engage their communities and outsiders more. With Apple operating a very closed and controlling culture, Sony and Nokia have a chance to do something very different.

Posted by Ed Cotton Some great thinking from Clay Shirky on the real threat to established media content, the idea that people start doing something useful with their cognitive surplus.

"And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads....

And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we're talking about. It's so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that  is 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.

I think that's going to be a big deal. Don't you? "

It's a great new way to think about the 2.0 world and consumer generated content, at last!

From a version of the talk Clay gave at Web 2.0 last week.




Posted by Ed Cotton A well-known British actor gets his dream assignment, the chance to make a program about the perfect pint of beer.

Nice work if you can get it, but there's even more upside because the show is all about creating beer that actually makes it into production.

Apparently, leading grocery chain Sainsbury's is interested in carrying the new brand.

The integration here is fantastic, no bolt-on or add on association, but a deep education in the form of programing that becomes a three hour ad for a new brand.

Although, it will be tough for this fledgling brand to compete against the established players, the rich level of content and the emotional journey that the programming will take viewers on, will be so much deeper than any ad campaign from one of the leading brewers.

The challenge will be building and maintaining the momentum after the initial wave of coverage and PR.

However, it does show an opportunity for a new way to think about branded content.

What if Bud was to develop a new brew with a programming idea like this, rather than simply attach its name as a show sponsor or have featured product placement?

Obviously Anthony Bourdain, is the one guy who could do this in the US- let's see what he does next after the success of No Reservations.



Posted by Ed Cotton