ZenithOptimedia

When it comes to watching television, I'll be honest and say that I'm one of the growing Gen Y demographic that does not watch telly. I don't like having to commit to sitting down at a predetermined time of the day just to watch a program.

As most of the telly shows I follow aren't "mainstream" per se, I hate having viewer aggro when the television network decides to can my show in favour of something with higher ratings. Trust me, too much viewer aggro on my part isn't good for health.

But at the end of the day, television is business. There is only so much real estate on networks, and the numbers that make the most profits always win. In the old fashioned tv system, it doesn't really matter how engaged people are with the show. Passion is not rewarded in the telly numbers game.

Something clearly has to change.

Introducing Pioneer One, a new indie sci-fi series that debuted on a bitorrent powered distribution platform Vodo, with P2P file sharing platforms such as uTorrent, Limewire and Pirate Bay also pledging their supports. A quick check on torrents distributing the first episode of Pioneer One at the time of this post - more than 40,000 people shraing content and over 5,000 people downloading today. 

One of the show's filmakers Josh Bernhard made a great observation about how niche shows, though they enjoy high DVD sales and online viewing, cannot sustain themselves on network television:

TV has other priorities than making good TV. You have vocal fanbases whose enthusiasm is ignored, because to networks, their passion isn’t worth more than beating American Idol in the ratings. The fact that TV can’t sustain a show like Firefly, to use a well-known example, with such passionate viewers, shows that something is wrong with how that system works.

The trailer here:

However, it is not the anticipated 1 million views the show receives that makes it a success in my books, but rather the following:

• reaching out to Gen Y demographic (like me), with quality content in a platform we natively use to get our entertainment media (bitorrent).
• the sense of community - ventures like these definitely have a high "talkability" value. Pioneer One leverages this off social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg and del.icio.us.
• added value - viewers donate money in order to have the 7 part show running. in return, they get bonus stuff like opening theme mp3 if they donate $5, or even a thank you note in the actual credits of an upcoming episode if they donate $100 amongst other bonus content. 

Click here to download:

Old Spice Real Time Case Study (1).pdf (5.41 MB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Old Spice Real Time Case Study (1).pdf (5.41 MB)

Here is a nice little case study from YouTube on the Old Spice campaign that recently rocked the online marketing community, and evidently a few of the target market too.

The BIG numbers to note are:
- 180+ video responses
- 8.8M YT channel views
- 134K YT channel subscribers
- 655K facebook friends
- 86K twitter followers

Not bad for a brand that you would have thought might have given up decades ago

Looking for an alternative to "words with friends" (the latest iPhone obsession) then try Penguins literary challenge. Penguin Books have launched a socially enabled online game to promote their 75th Anniversary series.

Participants have to match book titles with 75 clues - all taken from an animated party setting. Users can share and ask for help via facebook connect which also updates friends and of course collects a nice fan base for Penguin.

Those who do well can win a stocked bookshelf.

Great execution - and lots of memories here.

Starling is one of the new breed of Social TV companies looking to capitalise on the emerging behaviour known as "Media Meshing" (that is multi-media tasking, watching TV and tweeting from your phone or iPad at the same time).  Starling in their words are looking to optimise these experience, helping people find the #tags or facebook streams so that people can tap into these concurrent conversations easily and purely. They clearly have a vested interest in commercialising this through their application, but this is only one of companies venturing into this space.  

This media meshing behaviour is already happening in Australia.

If we look at popular programming we can clearly see these blips where mass media and social cross over. The below graph was taken from the time when the final episode of ROVE aired and shows a clear spike in twitter mentions from that single event.

TV is changing fast and this represents but one of only a few ways, so as audiences arguably fragment, the reach for shows might well be said to be narrowing, but therein, but on the other hand the relationship and engagement people have with these programs through social media means they are deeper.

 
Today, and not without a healthy dose of cynicism I attended an afternoon of presumed bloated presentations entitled "MySpace the next chapter in social media". Not managing to stay the entire six hour odyssey I was pleased to find that the Vice President of Myspace Mike Jones was the first man up.

Mike was the lucid, LA accented, well rehearsed speaker one would hope to lead MySpace in the teens of the 21st Century; a proven entrepreneur he showed a great depth of knowledge and passion for the MySpace product, and introduced its future to the tweeting (#myspaceevent) audience.

My key takeaways from Mike's interview with Mumbrella'sTim Burrows;

• MySpace is all about discovery, this discovery is fed by the content MySpace hosts (Music, video, games etc)
• Social or friend feeds are the means for discovery to take place, these feeds facilitate connections and are powered by the exchanges of artifacts (pixels and bytes)
• Mobile access is at the core of the future for MySpace 
• Mobile activities will be dominated by re-purposing content for applications; developed for a myriad of devices and platforms these applications will allow content to be distributed, shared and consumed in a user defined manner (single theme apps will be the way forward as apposed to a portal style one size fits all approach)

Finally on mobile e-commerce, this is the untapped revenue opportunity, single click transactions and micro payments are relatively low use now, but represent effective revenue generation options. Services and content will be tailored to best leverage these systems and gateways.      

     To be honest the MySpace future looks quite bright, they have been waiting in the wings quietly working away on new ways to engage consumers, work brands into their             content via the likes of video, and are sharing their feeds with Google and others to offer greater opportunity for content distribution.  They are committed to helping brands         develop branded content experiences, and are seeking out new revenue models via the likes of apps and e-commerce.

        Facebook and twitter might the darlings of the social-scape today, but count out the pioneers. With backing from News Ltd and Mr Murdoch himself, this is perhaps the                 next chapter for MySpace after all.