Influx Insights Weblog

subscription music services are back

Influx Insights — 2009-09-07T17:50:54Z

News from Europe of Spotify's approved iPhone application suggests that subscription services might be making a comeback.

Interestingly, Spotify's app is not available yet in the United States.

Could Apple's iTunes be planning to launch a subscription service to rival Spotify?

Posted by Ed Cotton

the fusion of social and old media

Influx Insights — 2009-09-03T22:42:15Z

The merging of social and old media is going to be happening more and more.

Instead of trying to imagine what the future might be like, take a look at the BBC's online coverage of the US Open.

You will see a blend of Tweets, text messages and reporting to provide the reader with a textured overview of the day's play.

It's the mixing of different sources that creates an interesting feel and one that's better than reading any one of the single sources alone.

Posted by Ed Cotton

brand keeps failing and people love it?

Influx Insights — 2009-08-17T21:39:50Z

Perhaps the marketing experts have been wrong for years when they have told brand owners to be very careful with every element of communication and to handle every little PR challenge with added smarts.

Could it be that brands are becoming just like Bill Clinton or even "The Terminator" in that they are impossible to destroy or they are covered in a thin coating of Teflon?

Take this story from Game Informer. (According to a reader survey)

- X-Box consoles have a failure rate of 54%

- Only 3.8% of X-Box owners would not buy another X-Box because of this

Note- This is not your typical shoddy low sample magazine research- the base is 5,000 responses.

It's amazing that people can put up with over half of these consoles failing and still love the brand enough to keep buying it.

What's so special about this brand?

Posted by Ed Cotton

activists who know how to tell a good story

Influx Insights — 2009-08-08T09:27:28Z

The battle for attention and issues is all about getting the story right and creating a compelling piece of media to transmit that story. This year food and animal rights have loomed from and center in three important films; Food Inc, The Cove and End of the Line.

Food Inc explores the impact of the industrialization of the US food system on people and animals, End of the Line covers the plight of fish in the world's oceans and The Cove focuses on the dolphin slaughter in small town in Japan.

I got the chance to see The Cove last night and it's a great film centered on the creator of Flipper and explains how a change of heart led him on a mission to release dolphins from captivity. This mission takes him to a small town in Japan where dolphins are acquired for aquariums and the ones that remain are slaughtered.

The problem with many documentaries is that fail to get their point across in a compelling way and end up preaching to the converted, The genius of The Cove and Food Inc is that appreciate and understand the need to expand the audience for the issue beyond the small band of activists. They do this by making the issues very clear and compelling and in the case of The Cove, adding a huge element of drama.

While these films will never capture the box office of Up, they are still must see movies that cleverly use social media as a tool for promotion and a springboard to activism.

The success of these films is proof that there's no substitute for good storytelling as a way to breakthrough in the attention war. Seeing a film about dolphin slaughter is not most people's idea of an entertaining Friday evening, but The Cove got me to pay attention, listen and to take action, which is no mean feat.

Posted by Ed Cotton

contrary to popular opinion, the crowd might be creative

Influx Insights — 2009-07-19T08:56:35Z

While the jury is out on whether or not the crowd can create, there seems to be a splinter of evidence to suggest they can. The new short film from Mass Animation looks almost Pixar-like in its quality. The project used Facebook to recruit and reach out to animators around the world, who contributed individual frames. The film has 50k fans and over 17k people downloaded the software to participate.

While the crowd did contribute on mass, the editing process and quality control must have been rigorous, because the final list of animators, who's frames were used, is fairly short.

Mass Animation must have done something right in its promotion, marketing and outreach to ensure that quality animators participated in the project. Obviously, the incentive of credits in a high profile short film is not bad.

Here's the trailer.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the atlantic on the economist's point of difference

Influx Insights — 2009-06-23T11:38:57Z

Interesting to see The Atlantic write such a flattering article about The Economist and the current state of the newsweekly business. The discussion revolves around the recent changes and re-designs at Time and Newsweek, who are both hoping to drag their publications to new found success in an otherwise dying print market.
The Economist is the one shining ray of light that everyone now wants to emulate, but The Atlantic does not believe this is possible because The Economist possess one thing these other titles lack.

"The secret to The Economist’s success is not its brilliance, or its hauteur, or its typeface. The writing in Time and Newsweek may be every bit as smart, as assured, as the writing in The Economist. But neither one feels like the only magazine you need to read. You may like the new Time and Newsweek. But you must—or at least, brilliant marketing has convinced you that you must—subscribe to The Economist. "

In the end, it's all about the brand.

Posted by Ed Cotton

10 themes coming out of influx curated

Influx Insights — 2009-06-12T16:33:43Z

Yesterday's Influx Curated was a complete over-stimulus fest.

If you ask for short-bursts of information, this is the result.

It's great chaos, but now is the time to try and make sense of it all and ask some serious questions about what it might mean.

Here are 10 themes that came across loud and clear to me and some of the people who raised them.

1. Stand for something

If you are fighting for an idea or trying to build a new business, have a point of view and stick to it.

(Eileen of Ritual, Adrienne of Woolyworks)

2. Get Out of Your Shell

Everyone has the power within themselves to do something great and to think creatively and imaginatively, it's just that most of us don't. We need to find ways to come out of our shells.

(Gary of OYF, Mark of Eat Big Fish, Joshua Brody, William and his masks)

3. Hope is Everywhere, You Just Have to Look

Listen, look and learn and you will find hope and inspiration

(Jody's story of Rwanda)

4. The Crowd Has Power

Power to create, power to dictate and the power to change

(Kanyi of Virgance, Paul of Mozilla, Neil of Nest)

5. The Crowd Needs Motivation

There has to be a leader and that has something to spark the imagination of the crowd

(Paul at Mozilla, Jeben at YouTube)

6. Story is King

Look hard for them, create them, tell them, share them

(Marieke of Peclers, Adrienne of Woolyworks, Alex Frankel, Tucker Nichols, Eileen of Ritual, Iain of Apple, Alan of Apple, Chris of Apple, Tom of Bassett and Partners )

7. Be an Optimist

Happy people make ideas good

(Mark of Eat Big Fish)

8. Be a Pessimist

Amazing things can come from dark places

(Chris of Apple)

9. The World Needs Ideas

There are huge problems everywhere and we have the potential to solve many of them from the ground up

(Emily of Project H, Alexis of Wired, Heather of Catapult, Joshua of REGIONAL)

10. More Corporations/Creatives Should Be Good

What's the problem with doing good, does it cost too much?

(Emily of Project H, Heather of Catapult, Casey of GOOD)

Posted by Ed Cotton

what we learned and heard at influx curated

Influx Insights — 2009-06-12T14:07:33Z

Here are a few of the things we learned and experienced at Influx Curated, which was held yesterday.

More material to follow very soon.

The vision of GOOD, the connective power of YouTube, 250 people singing in harmony, mobs for good, the meaning of good, the power of yes, the power of no, California’s need for design solutions, designing for Sudan and getting it wrong, finding ideas from nothing, saying no to CSI for mammoths, creativity from masks, provoking conversation with postcards, crowds making things, crowds promoting things, supermoms, a new manifest destiny for energy change, the need to connect with MCs, trends as stories, objects and craftsmanship, the culture of a small coffee company, tasty tuna tails, dark motivation, hope from genocide, escaping artistic block and the fetish objects of a dominatrix...

Picture by Dominique Pacheco of William Hall's mask session

A huge thanks to all of our speakers and to who attended. We had a great time.

Also, a big thanks to Flamingo who hosted our after-party.

Posted by Ed Cotton

surprises matter in a linear world

Influx Insights — 2009-04-27T15:54:19Z

Robert Bound writing in April's Monocle has a great piece about the problem with predictive software and music services; instead of introducing us to surprising artists and bands, we get something we could easily predict.

Apple's Genius is according to Noble an "over-used and under earned title".

Deeper into his piece he hints at the real beauty of newspapers, surprise.

"The shift to reading newspapers online isn't just sad for vanishing printworks and the demise of the most unbeatably usable and portable of media materials-paper-but it means reading in an accident free way. Without the need to fold and turn, a readers' key interests of business news, match reports and film reviews can be navigated seamlessly, but without stumbling upon the story of the British pub-sign painter or the intriguing report from the martial arts academy in Sichuan."

While it's not something that can save the newspaper industry, but an overlooked insight that makes them unique.

Posted by Ed Cotton

creative for multi-tasking media

Influx Insights — 2009-04-01T10:47:17Z

According to Nielsen's latest Three Screens report, 31% of internet activity occurs when consumers are watching television.

It seems there's a huge opportunity to exploit the two mediums more effectively. While putting a URL on the closing frame of a spot has been common place, there a very few examples where the two media have been tied closely together. If you add the astounding growth rates of online TV viewing with the growth of new services like Hulu, there have to be a whole range of new creative opportunities to make a connection.

At the recent AAAA's Media Conference in New Orleans, the Hulu executives suggested advertisers strive for greater interactivity in their online applications, almost encouraging the audience to play and multi-task with engaging banners, while they are viewing programming.

We can expect to see TV spots that take advantage of this behavior and a lot more creativity being poured into the creative that surrounds online TV viewing.

Posted by Ed Cotton

rethinking the movie theater

Influx Insights — 2009-03-31T16:01:49Z

Sony just signed a deal with AMC to bring its digital projectors into movie theaters.

One of the reasons AMC gave for the deal was the ability of the technology to show live events.

While many of us love the experience of seeing a movie in the theater together with a crowd, there hasn't been the opportunity to translate that experience into other events.

Think of the movie theater as a sports and concert arena.

A place to get a ticket for a sold out game or concert and an opportunity for franchises, teams and promoters to extend their revenue base.

It will be interesting to see how far this can develop and what business cinemas might be able to take from the TV networks and bars.

Posted by Ed Cotton

ignoring testing

Influx Insights — 2009-03-26T15:29:55Z

Deadline Hollywood has a great story about the eagerly anticipated NBC show "Parks and Recreation".

Apparently, the testing has not been going so great and somehow the blog managed to get hold of the research "debrief" which goes into some detail on the show's executional failings.

Apparently, testing like this is common place for most shows and nearly all the time it comes back negative. Further evidence that consumers aren't that well equipped to comment on new concepts.

Thankfully, it appears the senior folks are ignoring all the expensive research and moving on with the show regardless.

"All of the research we do around initial rough cuts is negative. If you had seen the initial research on all of ours and our competitors' successful shows, it tends to be like that."

Ben Silverman- NBC- Talking to Entertainment Weekly

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx quote of the day- robert thomson- wsj

Influx Insights — 2009-02-13T14:35:31Z

"Google -- I mean, the harsh way of just defining it, Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google, but it's terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content."

Robert Thomson- WSJ- Charlie Rose Show- February 11th, 2009

Posted by Ed Cotton

bale vs. the stimulus package

Influx Insights — 2009-02-06T14:28:04Z

For a brief shining moment, more people were talking about the Welsh actor than proceedings in DC.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the future of the movie biz

Influx Insights — 2009-01-26T20:05:53Z

One-by-one the future of the titans of the media industry is being called into question.

Post Sundance, Ty Burr, of the Boston Globe, put together a nice summary of the proceedings in Park City and ended his piece with a troubling conclusion for those in the business.

"Everyone agrees that the standard models of indie theatrical distribution and exhibition are broken; everyone at Sundance and in the industry is grappling with how best to replace them.

Some are even sure they have answers. Consultant and panelist Peter Broderick touted a brave new world of "hybrid distribution," controlled directly by the filmmaker that combines website direct sales, video on demand, Internet and TV deals, cellphone distribution - and, yes, a theatrical release when and if necessary. Much of this is already in place, Broderick pointed out, and, in some cases, has proven successful. What look like microprofits to a studio can be extremely macro to an independent director.

The most unsettling thought, though - the real game-changer - is that the movie theater audience may have gone away for good. Said panelist Mark Gill, head of the independent production company the Film Department, "My son doesn't care what format [a movie] comes in. He cares how fast he can get it and if it can come to where he is."

That may be the hardest lesson to take in at the close of Sundance 2009: That everything learned in the past quarter-century means absolutely nothing going forward."

Posted by Ed Cotton