Author: Angelo Fernando

Freedom to Connect

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This conference is worth watching. Called F2C: Freedom to Connect 2006, it is based on the assumption that the Freedom to Connect falls into the same category as Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Assembly.

"Each of these freedoms is related to the others and depends on the others, but stands distinct. Freedom to Connect, too, depends on the other four but carries its own meaning."

It’s about technology and policy, but as it is becoming so clear now, connectivity tips the balance of power toward consumers, and the outcome of a conference like this will make the powers that be very, very scared. The electronic democracy is just waking up.

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Logos as postage stamps

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

If you’ve ever used a service from PhotoStamps.com you’ll know that one of the no-nos in that service was that you couldn’t create a perfectly legal  0.39 cents postage stamp with a company logo. (They also disallowed anything obscene, offensive, pornographic, libelous …even convicted criminals or politicians, celebrities etc.)

It was great for ‘vanity’ stamps of your family, or favorite photo. It was great for companies promoting some icon or idea. I had contacted PhotoStamps twice and they  first said no to a stamp-logo, but then when they said they printed it, the order never arrived. Perhaps it was their way of enforcing the rule. Hopefully that wrinkle will be removed.

There’s news that the Post office has approved the use of commeccial images for stamps. Zazzle.com is one company who does it. It’s $16.99 for a sheet of 20 stamps. You could get the many denominations apart from the 0.39 cent variety.

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Advertising in the Podcast era

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While music and podcasting gingerly shake hands, podcasting and advertising are doing high-fives. Podcasters know they are sitting on a gold mine since their overheads are low, and they can create fresh content faster than corporate radio can. Advertisers will find these niches very useful, and worth a shot. Take a look at the companies registered at the Portable Media Expo in September this year.

Podtrac is an interesting company to watch, because it takes on the role that advertising agencies (at least their media buying departments) once controlled. They serve podcasters and advertisers, providing the former with targeting and tracking tools. Free measurement is also thrown in for Podcasters. Revenue will be through ads, sponsorshipe and sales.

You could tell how new the business model is by the fact that the site has a link to a page titled What is podcasting. Presumably many of the older ad agencies are still wondering if this locomotive too, like Blogging, will roll through their bucolic land and disrupt their picnic.

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Smart Billboards and ROI

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So ROI is coming to a billboard near you. The story yesterday in the Tribune, of a Chandler, Arizona company’s technology that can ID the radio station of a car passing by, is almost like the story of RFID tags for patients.

But not quite. MobilTrak detectors are attached to billboards that read the radio frequencies of vehicles on California freeways –not the identities of the cars themselves. Then, by coss referencing this with radio listener demographics, companies can serve up ads that are relevant.

That’s the theory. In practice, it will be limited to digital billboards, and targeting will not be able to serve on-to-one ads (since many vehicles with very different demographic could pass a billboard at any given time.) But at least, the information could give advertisers hard numbers to go by.

In a world where everything in marketing is more or less measurable, this is one more piece in the ROI puzzle.

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iPods in schools spread the word

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More iPods are appearing in schools -as a faculty requirement. See this story on how a Georgia State University has one history lecturer requires that students download 39 films on video iPods "so she doesn’t have to spend class time screening the movies."

What an amazing marketing and PR coup for iPod, especuially a story with references such as how the faculty wants to find "more strategic uses for the popular digital music and video players" and how staff and faculty have formed a team called "iDreamers."

The school has some 400 college owned iPods in use. A lot like Macs in the early days, right?

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Blogger’s Creed Vs Journalist’s Creed

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

John Cass’s post, commenting on Walter William’s Journalist’s Creed  brings up an interesting question about the blogger/journalist mindset.

His eight-part creed of sorts is acknowledgement that a blogger has to walk the fine line between credibility and responsibility.

I thought this topic is very valuable since the ‘who is a blogger’ question keeps cropping up from all angles. I listened to an IT Conversations podcast –an interview– where Dan Gillmor illuminates this very clearly. He talks of situations when a blogger who is not a professional journalist, sometimes commits an act of journalism. Does this person have to follow the guidelines that professional journalists do? I’m not talking of bias and transparency, but the legal implications. Gillmor’s fear is that one day a blogger, not understanding freedom of speech laws, will libel someone and be held accountable.

If you were to take a picture of a store employee yelling at a customer, and blogged about it, you would supposedly be doing ‘an act of journalism,’ in the same way that the person who captured the panic in the London Underground on a cell phone was momentarily –but not professionally –a journalist.

Should we then develop a blogger’s creed that gives those of us who write/report something to adhere to? Perhaps Gillmor’s Center for Citizen Media should consider it.

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Tower Records into Podcasting

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In Dave Kusek and Gerd Leonards book, The Future of Music, the authors practically warn music companies that if they don’t embrace customers and respect artists, they will be steamrolled into the digital landfill.

This story in Forbes, about Tower Records indicates that some companies have got the message. It is a podcast service called TowerPod.com that allows listeners to create podcasts  and audio shows using music from the site.

The company will pick up revenue from advertising it will slot into the podcasts –and share the revenue with those who created the podcasts! Marketing folk will obviously see an opening here to (a) buy these advertising slots, and (b) create their own podcasts since it opens a new distribution channel with strong brand recognition –alongside iTunes, of course.

The book’s main thesis, ‘music like water’ talks of music returning to a service once again, after being trapped in the productized format, the CD, tape and vinyl. I can see podcasting as just the tip of the spear of content distribution and sponsored communication. It will leap into newer formats when mobile phones (our future MP3 players) become the interface for such music services.

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What’s Amazon and iTunes up to? And what it means to marketing.

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

While Google is clearly moving into Microsoft territory with an Office replacement, the Amazon Vs Apple competition is equally worth watching.

All these ‘publishers’ are on a collision course. This MSNBC story highlights the Amazon move. There could be unexpected communications windfalls for independant musicians, podcasters and anyone who has been trying to pierce Big media.

The two billionaires, Apple and Amazon, are all pumped up. The former has sold one billion downloads on iTunes, and the latter just reported $1 billion in quarterly sales. Amazon’s Fishbowl, which began earlier this year is one step into Apple’s territory.  Will Apple reciprocate with, say, a business around downloadable books? Like I mentioned before, everyone’s a publisher. Of course, with iTunes, anything is possible. I recently downloaded 5 chapters of ‘The Future of Music’ via iTunes. The book is all about why content providers and musicians must embrace non-linear media, so marketing it via iTunes is a great way to demonstrate the power of these new publishers.

Sidebar: Found on Amazon:
Apple, The inside story of Intrigue, Egomania and Business Blunders.

:–)

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Google Vs Microsoft Vs Apple

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Google and Microsoft know the value of our desktop. Their land grab involves going after each other’s core business. Google just acquired Writely, and of course Microsoft is big on search. See Forbes story today.

Then there’s Apple, snapping at the heels of both. Apple has the brand image and the coolness factor to easily derail their plans, not by going after the desktop, but by giving us an alternative to the new media. The Mac Mini, is just the start of this. Mike Langberg of the San Jose Mercury News sees another frontier. Not the desktop, but the couch.

Worth a look: Google for Mac fans. http://www.google.com/mac.html

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Why change is to be expected, not resisted

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Having said that, advertising in the mainstream media isn’t entirely broke. Dwindling, maybe. But let’s be honest, we still (at least I do) pick up useful information about concerts, movies, sales, store openiings etc in newspapers. I never zap past a Geico or Aflac ad on TV (though I will a Godaddy un-commercial.)

But here’s another interesting take by Cory Treffiletti in Online Spin.

He was writing about responding to an audience question (at New Communications Forum) about what to do when a client does not want to venture into new media –because the old media still works. His response: write a case study about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, which survived for a loooong time… More seriously:

When your company is prospering, and things are looking great, is the BEST time to test out new ideas, because you have the wiggle room and you’ve been awarded the respect and trust to take risks. When you’re driving successful results, you should always be testing something new for further down the road because, inevitably, things are going to change.

I like that. Things are going to change. Big Music, for a long time didn’t want to ackknowlege that P2P was going to be the way people find music, lawsuits or not. They were in a hissy fit when Apple used the line "rip, mic, burn" but look how this Roman Empire, while still suing, has quietly adopted some of the Apple philosophy –if not follow in iTunes footsteps.

Big Journalism is rife with examples. San Francisco Chronicle , NYT etc are podcasting because they don’t want to be the last ones left to turn the lights off in the colleseum. Shel Israel has a good explanation here of how newspapers are also blending journalism and blogging. Things are changing, whether we embrace it or not. And let’s not forget, even bloggers need to recognize that this model too, will change, or be overtaken by something different or more improved.

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