Look for more and more advertisers to enter the content
production business. This announcement
by Budweiser, for their upcoming BTV, is a great example. As the popularity of YouTube illustrates, you
don’t have to be a major network to attract eyeballs. Granted, you can’t just feature a bunch of
product advertisement videos and expect the world to beat a path to your door,
but I’ll
bet we’ll see some interesting and memorable content arise from these
experiments. As the article notes, everything old is indeed new again
as this is a throwback of sorts to the 1930’s-1950’s when the advertisers owned
many of the radio and TV networks.
In yet another case of The Innovator’s Dilemma, but with a
twist, advertisers are in an interesting position to step in and become the
content creators. The networks are fearful of
losing precious TV viewers but the advertisers have little to lose, especially
given the higher and higher price of a 30-second spot and the ongoing concerns
of DVR-enabled commercial-skipping. Imagine the smiles on the Budweiser marketing team’s faces when water cooler
chatter turns from the latest Survivor episode to the latest BTV video…
Reebok had the perfect opportunity to do something like this a few
years ago with their Terry Tate character. Remember him? “Terry Tate, Office Linebacker” Here’s a link to one of the original pieces, still floating around on
Google Video, of course. Mindless? Yes. Funny? Absolutely! I still chuckle every time I see him come
from nowhere to knock another co-worker into tomorrow.
A traditional TV network would have tried to create a
regular sitcom about Terry Tate. That would
have been as disastrous as most of the other network bombs we’ve seen over the past few
years. However, the
occasional 5- or 10-minute segment showing Terry’s latest adventures would have
been a sure bet to lure in viewers.
It used to be that “the network” was defined as ABC, CBS,
NBC and Fox. The balance of power continues to
shift however, and the Internet itself is rapidly becoming the network. I love it!
P.S. -- Here are a few other good blog posts on this story: lost remote, ExperienceCurve and paidContent.
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