AP has committed to letting the content (the story) be at the center of everything; ‘the franchise is the content itself”
By setting up a new office Curly (CEO of AP) has transgressed this notion onto his operational organisation. Central starting point is the story, no separate isles with photo, foreign countries, graphic designs etcetera again. Instead specialists can gather any moment to decide how to organise the playout of the story through several available channels.
As I have mentioned many times in the past, telling a crossmedia story requires a different organisation form than traditional one-medium companies. Ever so often forgetting about this crucial element lies at the heart of failure in crossmedia formats. Today media are most of the time, still organised as separate isles floating in ever more rumorous and insecure waves of the fast changing media landscape. As Curey mentioned so excellent of the views of the wise media philosopher Marshal McLuhan: He was halfway right when he said: the medium is the message. It is the other way around.. the message is the medium.
Curley” “Competition for “eyeballs” is fierce, and the industry has yet to understand all its implications — “…like how to free our content from those expensive containers we’ve created — the newspaper, the broadcast and the Web site — and tagging our news for delivery in discrete places, on demand. And keeping control of our intellectual property.”
ONA HOLLYWOOD: Curley: ‘The franchise is the content’
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Interesting speech, and timely. On the topic of the changes that consumers are driving, as Tom Curley spoke of:
‘And, as we’ve seen so clearly in the last year or so, consumers will want to use the two-way nature of the Internet to become active participants themselves in the exchange of news and ideas. The news, as “lecture,” is giving way to the news as a “conversation.”‘
I’ve had a look recently at a PBS documentary ‘The Persuaders’ which is online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/ which talks about how advertisers are using techniques to persuade consumers to persuade themselves. Persuasion and the use of pervasive advertising is presented as a “new” technique to break through the barrage. I happen to have a book resting by my keyboard which was brought out in 1965: Whitney, R.A., Hubin, T. and Murphy, J.D. (1965) The new psychology of persuasion and motivation in selling, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Of the many techniques to persuade ’social interaction’ was considered the most effective. A quote from the book details how in 1957 Dr Thomas Gordon explained to a National Sales convention the then recent research:
‘Traditionally we have been led to accept the common notion that the best way to influence or change people is to communicate something to them-tell them, advise them, suggest to them, appeal to them, teach them, persuade them.
Recent psychological research studies have turned up evidence that casts considerable doubt on the validity of this approach. The approach that appears to be far more effective in influencing or changing people is to encourage them to communicate to you, express their opinions and ideas, verbalize their needs and complaints, talk out their problems and deep feelings, discuss their resistance to change…’
The idea has been around for a while but it is only now with interactive technologies, with the personal megaphone of the Internet that the conversation can actually happen. It is fascinating how consumers are driving these changes…and how media conglomerates are intergrating content, the ability to converse, free use, and content branding with selling. Why has it taken so long for the message to reach the advertisers and media conglomerates? I guess if a consumer wails in the non-interactive/one-way communication forest they’re not heard…
Dear Christy, I have an oldie too:
”If I can get you to make a commitment (that is to take a stand, to go on record) I will have set the stage for automatic commitment in the future with that earlier commitment through the power of consistency” (Cialdini, “Influence, science and practice” 1988)
It is “old” news, but it empowers our message of the importance of crossmedia communication.