October 6, 2005
maybe big media is all about being fake and getting away with it
Just because your client wants a blog doesn’t mean your client “gets” blogging. And yeah, that can be a nightmare.
Case in point: Gia is making a blog for a new Hollywood film [backstory here]. But instead of just getting on with it, they ask questions. Too many questions.
Poor Gia rants:
How much factual information do the readers want?
How much opinion do the readers want?
How slick do the videos have to be?
Should the videos be rough?
Do all of the images have to be exactly the same size?
Do all of the photos have to be landscape or portrait?
Will readers be unable to deal with photos of different aspect ratios?
Will the whole world crumble if a video isn’t an item that you’d see on a movie programme?
Will the internet cease to exist if one post is too short or too long?
What is too short or too long?
And so on.
It’s OK to have a commercial agenda on a blog. It’s OK if you want your readers to hire your consulting service, buy your company’s widget, recommend your band’s new album to their friends, or in this case, splash out for some movie tickets. Whatever.
But if you over-strategize, you soon stop treating your readers like human beings, and start treating them like “consumers”, there to be manipulated like labratory animals.
I don’t think Gia’s paymasters are stupid or evil people. It’s just that what works in Hollywood and Madison Avenue doesn’t work in the blogosphere, and it’s taking them a while to accept the fact.
One thing you notice when you start attending the blog conferences and hanging around the more well-known and respected bloggers on the planet: None of them seem to take it very seriously. They just get on with it. If what they do works for them, it’s because it all comes naturally.
But maybe Big Media doesn’t want it to all come naturally– maybe they want it to all come artificially. Maybe that’s why it’s so utterly dominated by celebrities, advertising and wannabes.
Maybe Big Media is all about being fake and getting away with it.
Must be something in the air. In my Wearing the Audience fastcast I posit this over-strategizing is Big Media protecting themselves from honestly and authentically interacting with people…as people.
More than that, they smell success, but they can’t identify it, they smell influence and revenue, but they can’t figure it out. So by trying to figure out what makes it tick, and replicating it [how the current obsolete business models work, all derived from B school case studies] they hope to monetize what in fact, actually is, authentic charisma.
I think its all deeper than this. I think its an issue of entrenched old money seeing the value in a new market.
The innovators and creators create a new world and these old money robots follow with their methodic resource hogging and overwhelming resources to eventually suck every bit of life out of the new medium.
But don’t worry they move slow and in the mean time there is plenty of money to be made.
At least they didn’t ask her about ROI.
Square Pegs In Round Holes
Hugh MacLeod: One thing you notice when you start attending the blog conferences and hanging around the more well-known and respected bloggers on the planet: None of them seem to take it very seriously. They just get on with it.…
Looks to me like an age old problem everybody working in advertising knows only too well: The client’s aversion to white space. The client’s insistence to add everything, AND the kitchen sink, to the copy. In this case, ask too many questions.
Hugh, you must remember this from your own advertising days. I deal with it on a daily basis.
It’s Hollywood. They don’t know how to create stuff until someone else lays out a formula.
Gia just needs to show them a “blockbuster” blog and then say, “We’re gonna do what they did.” It’s the Hollywood way/ad agency way.
Thanks for this, Hugh. I told them you wrote about it… so hopefully they will have popped round for some wise words…
Gia just needs to show them a “blockbuster” blog and then say, “We’re gonna do what they did.”
The problem is I’m doing something that hasn’t really been done before for a film– *I* am writing the blog, not the director, not the producer, not anyone on the production… me… an ‘outsider’… a blogger. I go to the set every day and write about the film, the filming, the cast, the crew and about life on set. I also take photos and video… I do it from my point of view.
I just want it to go live… so that they can see that the best, most important bit about blogging is the interaction in the comments section. (How are they going to deal with *that*?!)
“The problem is I’m doing something that hasn’t really been done before for a film…”
And that’s why you get all the questions. Trust me, I’m not saying it’s the *right way* to do it. Just the way to avoid all the questions. But too many people avoid the questions and end up with an unremarkable also-ran.
Blogging Presents a Different Communication Model
Ok, well, that’s a very unfunny title to use to point to something on gapingvoid.
Is “Big Media” about being fake and getting away with it?
Once again, Hugh at GapingVoid says what we’ve all been thinking (or at least what *I’ve* been thinking but never wanted to say in those TERRIBLE marketing meetings) …It’s OK to have a commercial agenda on a blog. It’s OK
Hey! Between your post, Hugh, and mine, we’ve convinced them! Weeeeeeeee! It’s *just* gone live: Sunshine…
And I’ve told you, even before I’ve told my mum…
Ahhhh, you don’t do html… http://www.sunshinedna.com
Maybe it’s evil, but it’s far from stupid for the paymasters to be asking these questions. They are the paymasters after all.
I’m sure plenty of celebrities and wannabes “don’t take it serious, and just get on with it” …why would bloggers be any different.
Paymasters pay for the blogger, actor, musician to be cool, and independent, and nuanced … and human. And they pay that specifically so they don’t need to be. So they can focus on asking as many questions as possible. Basic information reconaissance. The more you know, the better you are. Especially if you have a bottom line.
Would Gia be better off with the pot-smokin’ disorganized hippie blahrtist as her benefactor? Who just throws the money out the window, you just have to go get it?
Two types of people in this world, right? I’d rather have two than one.
Hugh was spot on– they *aren’t* evil or stupid (at all), they’re just trying to continue to own and control content in an environment where everyone else is sharing. I just wanted them to let go…
I still can’t believe they did it… I’m convinced it’s because of your post, Hugh…
Actually I’m with Assimilated Negro (bizarre name) on this. I assume they’re paying Gia to write the blog, and at least they are being brave enough to have open comments — I just made a fairly inane one on Gia’s blog to see if there was going to be some sort of approval process, and there isn’t. If I were a client I’m not sure I would do this.
I don’t think they are “over strategizing” I just think they were showing a bit of naivety over the nature of blogging and that in my experience spontaneous and honest looking blogs tend to have more visitors and more comments (possibly) than things which look like a corporate is “totally” running the show.
The only two celebrity blogs that I read are Neil Gaiman’s blog http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp and Zach Braff’s blog, http://gardenstate.typepad.com/ and it’s really refreshing that they are clearly written by the celebrities themselves.
Jamie Oliver’s hideous blog http://www.jamieoliver.com/diary/ for example is covered with promotion for his products and each post relates to trying to plug something that he is on, and makes me wonder whether he writes it himself. Yuck.
Do i need to be schizotypal to be a blogger?
NAH, I,m schizotypal now, i guess i need to be normal.
“Just because your client wants a blog doesn’t mean your client “gets” blogging.” Absolutely right Hugh and that’s where the education begins.
Take a closer look at the questions. None of the questions pertain to “strategy.” None of the questions relate to goals, objectives or ROI. (which I think should be included in a marketing blog strategy…it’s okay to throw tomatoes)
However, most of these questions are technical and technique e.g.,
–How slick do the videos have to be?
–Should the videos be rough?
–Do all of the images have to be exactly the same size?
–Do all of the photos have to be landscape or portrait?
–Will readers be unable to deal with photos of different aspect ratios?
It’s part of their learning process. Keep in mind, for most people blogs are a still a strange, new world; I would encourage clients to ask lots of questions.
Would you invest $/resources in something that you didn’t understand? Especially in an internet-based project that has the potential of creating significant global buzz/wom?
Congrats! to Gia for breaking new ground and for educating more people about blogs.
Annie, comments will only be ‘unmoderated’ when I am in there…
Thanks, Toby. I guess it’s difficult to understand how someone doesn’t *get* blogs when one has been consumed by them for so long…