Content Decoded

I’ve been MIA for a while but am slowing shifting gears and getting back into action. I haven’t yet had time to chew over the significance of these news but I wanted to capture these thoughts before I forget them.

Print off-shoots of popular digital properties become the new low-cost revenue channel for publishers:

A few years ago the conversations in publishing buzzed around creating and optimizing web properties for print magazines. While this is still a primary focus, Meredith and Hearst have taken to using print offshoots to market their web properties. Case in point: magazines for Delish.com MixingBowl.com and Realbeauty.com

The content on mixingbowl.com and realbeauty.com is largely user-generated and there is some amount of  gratification and reward to a community than seeing their recipe in print.  Popular blogs (think the sartorialist, chocolateandzucchini.com etc) have resulted into books, so its only natural that popular web properties have their own print versions. But where do we go from here ?

Digital is so fragmented that new devices and platforms are constantly changing the dynamic between the content producers and the readers. I am curious to see how the content producers innovate to serve up this new audience.

Tying this post to my previous post about the iPad – instead of a print version of the mixingbowl or delish – would  an iPad application for recipes be more useful than a print magazine ? Just a thought.

There have been a few dismissals of the iPad. My Facebook feed was flooded for a few hours last night with friends calling the iPad an exaggerated version of the iPhone. While that judgement may not be far off the mark, I am personally quite excited for the iPad and the potential impact it can have on the content publishing worlds. So a few things off the top of my head:

New Markets – I think the main thing the iPad will do is unlock new markets and underserved audiences. I’m thinking my 50-yr old Mom or my 5 year old niece. The broad applicability and price points of this device will fill the niche for readers who want more than just books on their device and computer users who want a scaled down version of their PC. I’m curious to see how existing publishers will optimize for these markets and the platform.

Content: I’ve head some very smart people talk and discuss “the medium is not the message” argument. While I am not sure I even understand the more academic discourses on this topic, one thing is clear to me. The medium may not be the message, but the medium will certainly dictate and push for innovation in the deliverance and creation of the message. Much like what the iPhone did with the application community. I think it will be interesting to see as the iPad technology evolves, what kind of new markets and industries it decides to support. The strongest advantage the iPad has against the Kindle (sorry Nook – I’m not even sure, I should include you here in the competition!) is its iTunes network.

Over a pizza discussion with the team the other day, Justin bought up an interesting POV. He mentioned how the future should actually have been convergence of technologies into one device – but the iPad actually fragments this convergence. What are your thoughts about this?

Update: This news article re-affirms my initial thoughts about the iPad’s target audience: the middle-aged.

Social media is evolving from an engagement platform to an ecommerce platform.

With the year ending, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I was and what I was doing around this time last year. In December 2008, I was presenting to all my clients a Twitter 101 deck and giving them a practical, logical reasoning of  why they should consider jumping on Twitter. Fastforward 12 months and my agency is not only running and growing over 10 Twitter feeds for our clients, but we’ve gathered a rich  historical database of our results.

I want to try and imagine now, how the next 12 months are going to surprise me and knock the breath out of me. Social media and it’s evolution excites me. And for 2010, I’m putting my stake in the ground for E-commerce.

We are going to witness a major shift in how we approach social media. 2010 is going to demand stronger measuring tactics and more importantly, tangible results. Brand building, awareness, buzz and fan activation are important goals but clients and agencies alike will now push for more tangible goals: sales. A direct increase in revenue.

Dell just announced today that it credits about $6.5 million of its revenues to Twitter. Dell’s aggregate presence on social media (Facebook & Twitter) and its own community sites (Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm) has 3.5 Million + fans and followers that have collectively contributed to the $6.5 Mil rev. achieved.

What’s important to consider is the astounding growth (more than double!) in just three months following Dell’s announcement in June at having reached a 3 Mil revenue mark. Will the numbers reach 12 Million+ by 2010 ?

Granted $6.5 Million is a tiny piece of Dell’s $60 Billion revenues – but the unparalleled (100%+)  growth in just three months alone is worth noting.

We are just beginning to see the potential of driving sales through social media.

Another point to consider:

As financial and human-resources investment in social media continues to grow, it will only get more time-intensive and expensive for a brand to push their audiences to three different web-based destinations: 1) It’s own website 2) It’s Facebook profile and 3) It’s Twitter page.

I think by late 2010, it will be fair to expect brands to start prioritizing their investment and efforts, and arguably giving first preference to its social media destinations. I know it sounds far-fetched. The idea that a brand’s website can be completely cannibalized by its social media presences seems preposterous, but it just makes sense to me logically.

If I can grow the impact of my brand and my revenues ten times faster on the social web than via my website – why wouldn’t I just put more resources into my Facebook page?

Also, it is a LOT to ask a customer to fan you, follow you and also sign up for your email newsletter. Ecommerce needs to get streamlined – content needs to get streamlined.

Signs are already pointting in this direction. Earlier this year, 1800-Flowers quietly opened an E-commerce store on its Facebook fan page.

On it Facebook page, 1800 Flowers accepts payments with all major credit cards and will soon implement Facebook’s proprietary payment platform. (Although the company only has about 8000 fans on its page (and not much fan activity – but that you can attribute to the fact that 1800 Flowers it not exactly what you’d call a passion brand.)

A friend of mine who works at a luxury fashion brand informed me that her company is “definitely” selling products on Facebook starting 2010. Facebook is one of their strongest focus for next year.

These are just my top level thoughts on a topic that is going to become very important and talked about next year. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. If you are a brand, I want to know more about how you are looking at measuring success in social media. Let’s keep this discussion going!

If two years ago everyone wanted their content to ‘go viral,’ now everyone wants to ‘crowdsource’ their content. Back in August of 2008, Tim Devin created a project that incorporated elements of both these buzzwords, but did it in an authentic way that generated a passionate and devoted following. His I left this here for you to read project was a true original that was created to explore the relationships between people and their environment.

Devin is a Boston-based conceptual artist and writer. His work deals with humanizing public space, and combating what he views as the negative effects of urban anonymity (such as people’s emotional isolation, and lack of attachment to their environment). Recently Tim was nice enough to answer some questions about “I left this here…”:

ContentDecoded: What was the impetus to start this project?

Tim Devin: For me, “I left this here for you to read” was an art project. I’ve done a number of projects that involved leaving things in public for people to find. And I’ve done others that involved gathering people’s stories. Another thing that I’ve tried to do is to get people to notice the other people around them, to think about all the strangers around them—and to notice their environment more. I like to think that “I left this here” combines these things; I think that’s where it came from.

CD: Crowdsourcing is the “it” buzzword of the moment, did you always intend this to be a group project?

TD: It was always a group project. I came up with the idea and the design for the magazine, and then asked people I knew to contribute material, to help edit it, to help assemble the pages, etc. After a few issues, I thought it would interesting to completely open it up, so that anyone could do any of the jobs, if they wanted to. I thought this would make the finished magazines more interesting, and maybe eventually they’d look completely different than my original concept. I also told people they could go and start their own if they wanted to. So far, two different groups have taken me up on that, and a few more people are talking about starting their own, too.

Involving other people more actively seemed like a good way to go, because then I wasn’t in complete control. Making it more open made it an Everyone Involved Project, not just a Tim Devin Project.

CD: What was the hardest things to source? The content, distribution, printing, etc.?

Getting people to submit material was really easy, actually.. The majority of the people involved in the project were writers, artists, poets… Over 100 people submitted work—maybe 150. This is probably because it’s difficult to get published, and the magazine offered to print everything it received, within certain guidelines. I think another factor is that, even if you do get published, your audience is limited to the type of person who will buy that particular type of book or magazine. The idea behind this project was that whoever found the magazine might read it. I think this last reason is why a lot of people are doing guerilla art lately—it potentially connects you with a bigger audience.

Distributing was popular too—I think because it’s relatively easy, and fun. And because most people thought leaving a gift for a stranger was a nice thing to do. About 100 people volunteered to help distribute the magazines.

Printing, editing, design, etc.—these weren’t as popular. A couple people helped with design. A half dozen helped with editing. I think this is because it’s a lot of work, and everyone was a volunteer.

CD: Do you think your model could be replicated on a larger scale? If so, how big?

TD: Coordinating all of this was a lot of work. I think what was great about the magazine was that it was completely open to everyone, but this made it a lot of work for me. If anyone wants to make a larger-scale open project like this, I wish them the best.

CD: What was the single most surprising result or learning from this project?

Most of the people who helped leave the magazine around for other people to find told me they were glad to have done something nice for a stranger. It’s reassuring that people like this exist.

CD: Would you ever try something like this again?

I’m actually working on a smaller open project right now. It’s a project about what residents of Somerville, MA think (or hope, or fear) might happen in the future of their community. It’s called “The history of Somerville, 2010-2100.” It’s a lot smaller than “I left this here,” but I’m using some of the same tactics.

There are several interesting learnings from this project. I particularly liked that the content wasn’t limited to a certain topic. People were allowed to write about things they were passionate about, not what some corporation wanted. Also worth noting is the ‘crowdsourced’ distribution model. By doing it this way, you create opportunities for discovery that becomes part of the narrative in and of itself. Clearly scale is an issue, but I would think that something along these lines could be interesting for a niche brand that is looking to connect with a specific demographic (age, location, economic, etc.).

- Interviewed by Rick Liebling, who now deserves an honorary mention and Editor Status on our website!!

Esquire Magazine continues to push the boundaries by adding a layer of digital interactivity to its printed product with its current Augmented Reality issue.

With the help of The Barbarian Group and Psyop, the typically one-dimensional Esquire mag now offers a multi-dimensional with cover boy Robert DowneyJr popping out (literally) to introduce the technology to the tune of typography leaping off the page, a funny joke from Gillian Jacobs in its Beautiful Woman feature (come back after midnight and she’ll tell you a different joke), a Lexus ad that highlights new product features and a Jeremy Renner fashion spread.

The Renner & Lexus pieces are most interesting. To quote The Barbarian Group’s Benjamin Palmer, “The fashion spread uses AR to do something you can’t do in the magazine – show you interactive views of the outfit(s) and different clothing combinations in a way you couldn’t do in print. The Lexus ad takes an interesting and complicated pair of technological features that would be difficult to explain with photos and text, and shows you advanced simulations of the technology.”

So, putting all the first-to-market hype aside (and Esquire is old hat to this),the real question is, can adding a layer of digital to print solve the woes of the publishing community and improve the consumer experience?

It’s unlikely that AR will be the solution to the demise of print journalism, but one thing is for sure traditional print as we know it is going to evolve into a more hybrid form. And while some may claim AR to be just another gimmick and a tick in the marketer’s To-Do-List, I admire Esquire’s effort at going where no magazine has gone before to enhance the experience of reading a print magazine through a layer of digital utility, evident in the Lexus ad and Renner fashion spread.

I remember watching the TV reports depicting the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago. I wonder how the world would have reacted, had we had the ability to share our thoughts digitally.

On this epic anniversary, traditional media is taking second place to social media, with Twitter successfully capturing a global sentiment.

Twitterwall displays Twitter messages which are using the hashtag #fotw on a virtual East Side Gallery. The aim of the project is to share thoughts on the fall of the wall as well as to focus on “which walls still have to come down to make our wold a better place”. The page was blocked in China after nearly 2,000 web users in the country left messages on the wall.

To prevent spam, users can only post up to five messages a day. Additional camera icons on the wall can be clicked to view some of the 1,000 huge styrofoam dominoes painted with messages of peace by students, celebrities and politicians, which were toppled on Monday’s nights celebrations.

What I love about Twitterwall  is the graphic of the with the overlying images and text, which literally wraps the wall with human sentiment. So much like Berliners wrote messages on the Berlin Wall decades ago, people from all over the world are now getting to write their own messages on this social media Berlin Wall.

Looking to the future, I predict more free-standing web destinations that will mash a live twitter feed with other content forms to tell a story in the format that does it most justice.

MTV News experimented with a different approach in packaging its content by offering up their long-form text stories and videos into smaller, blog-like entries with provocative headlines. Result? The News section drew 3.5 million unique video viewers compared to the 2.5 million from the last year and nearly 10million streams compared to 5.3 million streams last year. (3rs quarter numbers)

For example, in the past, an interview with someone like Jay-Z might have yielded a 1,000-word story, “But there might be a totally fascinating nugget in paragraph six. Now we make it its own piece.”

The same approach is taken with video, the idea being to provide users more opportunities to discover content. “Our users live in a search and social universe,” said MTV News, vp, Ben Wagner. “So this is about more, shorter and faster.”

“Short-form online video consumption is exploding, but there’s still a lot of confusion among marketers over which ad formats deliver for brands without compromising the user experience,” said Nada Stirratt, EVP of digital advertising at MTVN. “By exploring the viability of new ad products around short-form online video, Project Inform provides the type of insights crucial to creating the innovative, custom solutions that this marketplace needs.”

The result has been a flood of new users and traffic. During third  quarter 2008, the section averaged 2.5 million unique video viewers and 5.3 million streams. During this past third quarter, the section drew 3.5 million uniques and nearly 10 million streams–increases of 40 percent and 88 percent, respectively.

Have you heard of any other networks or media properties experimenting with short-form content successfully?

eBay Cook Banner Ad

When it comes to grabbing people’s attention online, banner ads have never exactly had the easiest job. But, things are starting to heat up for the skyscraper, leaderboard and rectangle.

San Francisco’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners has put rich media banner ads in the “content spotlight” in its recently launched “Come to think of it, eBay,” campaign.

Tasked to reinvent eBay’s image from the place to go for flea market finds to a destination for everyday purchases, Goodby uses banner ads specifically targeted to areas popular among eBay users, such as cooking, fashion and music, to bring to life eBay finds curated and demonstrated by experts. Rather than simply “broadcasting” the message through text and visuals, the ads, like this in-banner cooking show starring San Francisco chef Mark Sullivan, who makes Moroccan spiced chicken from start to finish, actually demonstrates the benefits of eBay shopping and brings them closer to something they actually care about – cooking. During the cooking lesson, users can click on the items in the ad and be taken directly to an eBay site where they can purchase the items.

Kudos to Goodby for its series of banner branded utilities, which have successfully transformed the boring banner ad into an engaging content-driven eBay interaction.

P.S. As part of its campaign for users to really experience that power of the eBay marketplace, eBay is moving from the virtual to the real world this holiday season, conducting a 12-city tour with a Mobile Boutique, as well as a pop-up retail spot in Manhattan to showcase the breadth and depth of items found at the online site. Check out eBay’s Holiday microsite to learn more.

I came across Fora.tv a few weeks ago and when I looked it up, I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar name on the team. Blaise Zerega and I connected on Linked in a few years ago when we were both at Conde Nast. Blaise has a particularly interesting background and has created a niche for himself launching  magazines and content properties. Prior to joining Fora.tv as the CEO, Blaise led the technology coverage at Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine. He was kind enough to chat with me for a few minutes on the phone yesterday and I want to share some of the interesting themes that popped up in our conversation.

If you haven’t checked out Fora.tv, do it now. Fora.tv is building the world’s largest content library of unmediated video from live events, lectures, debates, and conferences going on all the time at world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences. As Blaise said, “Everyday all around the world, great ideas are being discussed in a university classroom or at a conference. There is a strong opportunity for this long-form content that people are interested in, but don’t have access to. ” And Fora makes this aspirational content accessible to everyone.

Fora’s business model is fairly straightforward right now with three revenue steams: 1) Advertising and Sponsorships 2) Production (live streaming conferences etc0 3) Premium Partnerships. With Premium partnerships Fora helps its partners unlock the value of their content and upsell it to more audiences. Because Fora attracts a smart, affluent and passionate audience and it offers partner’s content in safe environment. Additionally, fora’s infrastructure allows the partner content to travel widely and freely on the web. They just started generating revenues this year so I’m curious to where they end up a few years from now.

I want to highlight the two themes that emerged from my conversation with Blaise. Tell me what you think.

1) The You Channel: “In the future, there won’t be millions of channels,” says Blaise, “there will be one channel and it’ll be yours.” Blaise referred to this notion of “serendipitous discovery” that will dominate our experience with content on the web. Fora unlocks its content for youtube, hulu, boxee, mobile and even facebook – allowing users to consume partner content when they want, and how they want it.

2) Need for high quality content: One of the wagers the Fora team is making on the future of content is that users will demand high-quality content. “People right now are accepting low production value,” Blaise mentioned. But as the premium space expands, the online video experience will need to be as good as broadcast. That’s why, all the content we produce at FORA is now in High Definition.

3) Print and Online are different medium, but still media: One of my questions to Blaise was whether his experience in print media was helping him with his new job as the CEO / Editor of an online content company and his answer didn’t surprise me at all. He summed it up, “Regardless of the media, you are still trying to compete for attention.” As an example, he shared how Fora.tv only started using headlines for the videos in Nov 08 (the company was founded in 05!). As a print journalist, crafting intriguing, provocative headlines is a must-have skill and Blaise knew it was teh same for video. Once Fora started using headlines for their content, the results were immediate and positive. (increase in consumption, engagement, shareing etc)

Hope you enjoyed this! Let us know your thoughts below.

Mickey Mouse, the classic kid character is set to get more in touch with how kids today are consuming content – debut Mickey as an a vintage-looking yet three-dimensional cartoon action hero.

In an attempt to establish Mickey as one of the world’s best-known action heroes such as Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog and then build on his new wave of fame with a games franchise and merchandise, Mickey has been pulled “out of the world of cartoons which is where he belongs and feels comfortable and pulled into a world we call the Cartoon Wasteland,” says game designer  Warren Spector.

Spector developed the Disney Epic Mickey game, set for launch on Nintendo’s Wii console next year, as the latest instalment from the Magic Kingdom’s fast-growing videogames arm.

And while the plot of the game is intriguing to say the least,  3-D Mickey is really all about selling games – or rather selling the right form of content to match marketplace desires. Disney Interactive Studios is working to benefit from a relatively robust videogame market by using existing characters from Disney’s vast library as well as creating new ones. In Disney we see a evolution that reflects the changing nature of content – Disney started as a film studio, added television capabilities and now publishing and videogames are set to be the next creative pillar of the company.

Here’s to Mickey, who at the ripe old age of 81 is still  a modern mouse for modern times!

Full story from The Guardian.