The Dark Ages saw its end coming with the invention of Gutemberg's Press. Books became massive and people could read the Bible, and started to have their own interpretation of the words, taking away some of the power the Catholic Church had at the time. Of course that the change of Era took a while, like it usually happens.
Today, the era of the mechanization and massive doctrination is heading to its grave since the popularization of the Internet and the arise of social networks. We are living the new Renaissance where the obscurities of the past modern era begin to fade and some other have started to appear, but those are the ways of evolution.
For those who don't know who I am, I actually work as a marketing researcher at a digital media company. I study human behavior while online and how they consume the different contents available. I have been studying this since 2008 for an academic purpose essay "A walk through new audiences into the hyper-media, the beginning of the end of traditional mass media hegemony". What I concluded after my research back then was:
"In conclusion I would say that the phenomenon of participatory audience is not an isolated one and its here to stay. I would say that the media is evolving and is no longer an option to change or not. Today we have what could be considered as "hypermedia" in which information comes through text, images, videos and also by users. An example is YouTube video communication and became so big and important Google just bought it. Never before people having to communicate with each other had become so important for companies, any company that is attempting to sell something, must take into account these new social behaviors.
Now I can find out a product X that sold in Indonesia thanks to my online friend I met on Facebook and I talked about it, or an Iraqi friend posted on my "wall" a video that she made denouncing the horrors of war. Thanks to the Internet and the growth of blogs and social networks, now, as well as Thomas Friedman said "The Earth is Flat." Many factors have been the "leveling" but I dare say that these and the new participatory hearings have been the most. People move to technologies and as the examples illustrate, the changes come from the periphery - the users themselves - not from inside the institutions.
Traditional media will not disappear but will gradually transform and evolve. The media will want to continue to live traditional regions not evolve their information technology. Television is not "demand" live of populations that still lack the most advanced technologies select television programming, such as the famous TiVo, which lets you record your favorite programs and watch them whenever you want. Of course, companies wishing continue making profits have to move to digital, the smarter they are already doing." (Morales, Laura. Un paseo por las neo-audiencias en los hiper-medios. El fin de la hegemonía de los Mass - Media. Julio 2008.)”
I fell in love with the Internet in 1995 when I first met it while studying at one of the first 2 Institutions in Mexico to have Internet access in the country. I fell in love with it because well, I'm a NERD, but most of all because I could access tons of information that came all over the world, also to connect with people with similar interests, even if they were from far away. So I entered the world of a BBS (The precursor of chats, social networks and instant messaging platforms) and found some other people like me with whom I could chat and share ideas: Internet opened a social life for me. I do have friends "in the real world, and social networks keep me posted on their lives viceversa. I live a 50%online 50%offline life :)
However I am not the subject of this blog post. So, returning to the subject, Internet has changed people's behavior, thoughts and habits and the ways of before cannot be the ways of now and the future. The change has installed itself as the status quo so now, one day you make think you have understood what has happened and how is happening and in that moment something will occur that will change that all over again.
These are the times where 20th century leaders, marketers, business men and women, are confused and disoriented. During these years of research and follow up of this new digitalized society, I have learned that regarding the Internet: Expect the Unexpected. Because Internet is the ONLY MASS MEDIA where its audience is the one generating the content and leading the way. And yeah, I do consider Internet to be now a mass media, the ultimate mass hyper-media.
The faster the politicians, leaders, marketers and business understand that they have to un-learn what they knew before and learn new things at a crazy speed and to do so they have to listen to the majority of us, the higher their probabilities to stay in power and stay in market. Internet has made possible to unhid what was hidden, to see what is truly happening and what people is really into.
I have 2 case studies to share with you to prove how this generation (mine) is different and why the 20th century old big fat dudes owners of TV networks, newspapers, banks, and governments believed about the us and the world is outdated and plainly wrong.
Case Study#1 Kevin Smith's independent entertainment venture, or "How to make the learning curve profitable by including your audience in the process".
I have been a fan of Kevin Smith's humor for quite a while now. He is an entertainer that started his career as a filmmaker back in the early 90's with a RIDICULOUSLY LOW BUDGET film named "Clerks". His film succeeded just because he was doing something he liked, and was passionate about it, in a time the world was about to change, forever.
He told a story about his friends and his life and oh surprise! someone LIKED it! He appointed a new niche market of film geeks and high-school "outsiders" As myself and him (he is a fat guy who managed to succeed by being original and funny).
His last big studio film was "Cop Out" a film that because some studio's white-collar money-oriented "big shots" put their sticky, greasy, useless hands on it and turned out to be not as "profitable" as they expected. It would've been if they've let the creative one do the creative,part and stay away from it. Instead, the lack of success was blamed on Kevin, when he was actually the last one to be blamed.
Then, he made "Red State" a film that deviates from his traditional comedy flicks, it is a thriller/drama based on the true story of the Phelps family (The religious nuts that embraced the slogan "God hates fags"). And he did it without a major studio and his promotion campaign was solely made by Internet, specially by Twitter. He managed to communicate with all his fans through the US and filled different venues offering the screening of the picture and afterwards a Q & A. He offered live interaction! And people actually paid $100 bucks to attend this event.
Parallel to the production of this film, in order to help his business plan for it (basically return the investors their money) he started some podcasts where he sits with a friend and talks, he started talking about his journey making this film, but evolved into a bigger thing without him planning it. He hit the jackpot: a latent need from an audience.
He called his podcast venture: SMODCAST a catchy, creative name that comes from Smith and Moser Podcast (Scott Moser is his since-beggining-of-time producer) and what Kevin does best and can`t stop doing is talking to people. He is an hipo-maniac twitter addict too. He managed to have an audience for his different podcasts. Seeing this success and keeping in touch constantly with his audience via twitter he decided after throwing some polls that the way to go was INTERNET RADIO, and quit on filmmaking.
I have been following this project since he started, I have listened to his podcasts since October 2010, and when he announced he was going on Internet radio I told him via twitter that was an excellent idea! that he was on the right way. Until now, I haven't received an answer to my tweets, or a mention but I don't interact in twitter as much either. (I have a healthy 50%-50% online-offline life, and the online is mostly dedicated for professional purposes). And the success of internet radio and its growth potential is not something I made up, you can see here a study on internet radio engagement, and online ad effectiveness: Web Radio Users Deeply, Broadly Engaged
So, he went trough with it. On may 9th SIR (Smodcast Internet Radio) started broadcasting. Again he has the wit to come with great names! This launch was heavily announced in all his podcasts. He managed to partner up with Stitcher, an internet radio broadcast platform that allows everyone with a computer, smartphone or mobile device and an Internet connection to listen to live radio stations, and to broadcast live!
He started with no experience whatsoever in radio production; he installed the "radio booth" in his living room. He started also with a commercialization strategy: He is selling ads for 200 dollars, they are live mentions, not recorded adds, and as the study I mentioned lines above say, if the advertising is embedded in the content, the impact is bigger. Makes sense, contextual advertising is the new thing right now, because we hate intrusive ads. We hate them! that's what we are looking at less TV, for real, just check out this story on the New York Times, Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S.
The very first days of broadcasting they couldn't get people "to call in"; for some unknown reason the phone lines didn't work so they switched to Skype. Turned out it worked a lot better than traditional phones and was more in line with SIR's concept:). Also there had been times where is dead air, or they don't know the mic is on and well! Every mistake they told me back in school it shouldn't occur during a radio show (I majored in Communication Sciences and Audiovisual Production). But who would’ve thought that we will stay listening? Nobody in any respectable radio station would've believed me. We stayed because we are engaged to the show, we are engaged to Kevin who portraits to be "one of the coolest guys in Hollywood" who is in constant communication with his audience and has let us join him through out his learning experience, asking for our help and comments to make SIR better everyday. And he is actually selling ads, the big brands are not with him, but the small business those that have small promotion budgets are there, and there are many!
The content of SIR is mostly humorist, the purpose is to ENTERTAIN.
SIR has a daily morning show Kevin holds with his wife Jennifer Shwalbach who is more a house-wife than a media star, they comment on news, have interesting interviews and interviewees... It seems to me like the "side B of the radio". Mainstream media/content is loosing its hegemonic quality, B sides also want to be seen, heard and read.
Another show is "Jay and Silent Bob get Jobs" a mid-day show of Kevin and his life-time friend and actor Jason Mewes where Jay talks about an anecdote of his life (he has so many, "he leads a life of adventure" as Kevin says) and Kevin just makes funny remarks. Both are silly dirty funny. But the point here is: He has an audience, and a loyal one, because he is one of the cool guys.
Case study #2 Netflix. The evolution of a necessity, at affordable prices.
Netflix, great company, I had the chance to meet Neil Rothstein (VP of Online Marketing) and Scott Lee (Marketing Executive), and they have a really awesome thing going on. For those who doesn't know Netflix, it is an online service for movie rentals. They started with DVD's and evolved to video streaming. They are rocking the world of entertainment, literally. Netflix business model and the fail of Blockbuster to move fast into the digital era leaded to BlockBuster's bankruptcy in the US and survives in developing countries such as Mexico where the internet penetration is still low and the prices of broad band internet connection are still high and the service we have from the ISP companies here in Mexico is beyond LOUSY and EXPENSIVE, but, that's another story for another post.
So, Netflix has succeeded big and of course you may think, yeah but what about piracy? Well it turned out that it is beginning to happen what I predicted about a year ago, that in this Era, if you LISTEN to the consumer and make the product AFFORDABLE to most of the population, consumers will buy and we prefer quality products. Here, the story published may 17th that shows Netflix has overcome p2p downloads in the US: Netflix Beats BitTorrent’s Bandwidth
So, that forces me to ask this question: WHAT ARE THE MUSIC LABELS/FILM STUDIOS STILL COMPLAINING ABOUT? Itunes have showed us since it's beginning that we consumers are willing to pay a FAIR PRICE for things, and entertainment is included. Internet has made possible for SIR and Netflix to obtain revenue by selling a product that people are demanding with a low-cost operation. Kevin Smith is far from getting tons of loads of money by his SIR project (at least for now), but he can make a fair amount of it to assure a decent living, he can make good money, also help small business make good money too by advertising at an affordable price, and entertain its audience. He is not doing it for free, he is just doing it for a fair price. And engaging his audience in every step of the way.
Who decides which price is fair? The consumers, the public. It is happening with sites such as e-bay or mercado libre in Latin America. Who is deciding if the governments are doing their job we are paying them to do? The people communicating by twitter are coming together, showing we are more than them and asking for FAIRNESS, asking for a real democracy not the mockery of democracy we have today where its just a popularity contest and they really work for themselves, their families and their pockets. We are just good to get votes. Well that's about to end guys.
This is the Renaissance of the 21st century, where getting away with a lie is more difficult (still not impossible, but we'll get closer to that I'm confident), where equals can meet globally and share ideas, where it is absolutely necessary to re-think the concepts of nation-state, and nations and states, where a FAIR DISTRIBUTION OF THE WEALTH is absolutely necessary, because there is no way the humanity will overcome the problems of the future (scarcity of food, water, energy) if we don't redefine the economic and political systems in order to make them work for all us, not just for the few "privileged in power".
