Entries categorized as ‘sxsw2008’
Piracy can no longer be thought of as a nuisance. It is the paradigm through which people obtain music. This panel will discuss specific tactics on how piracy can be harnessed to our advantage and why it is a positive thing for the music industry.
Jason Schwartz Prod Mgr, AngelsoftRandy Saaf CEO, MediaDefender IncI was one of the few people who didn’t make it to Jane McGonigal’s keynote, which sounds like it was excellent. But, I thought this panel might have some insightful parallels to publishing. Especially as recently there has been a lot of talk about piracy increasing the sales of books. The panel consisted of two guys who took very different approaches to piracy online. One worked for a company who, together with record labels, promoted bands by seeding albums on torrent sites. The other, who also worked in conjunction with labels, spent his time filling torrent sites with as many corrupt files as possible in an attempt to bury any actual pirated material. Jason Schwartz from Angelsoft explained how piracy can be a positive marketing tool:
- When seeding content you can track the number of downloads but also geographic data. Every IP address is logged. That information is then used strategically to plan tours etc.
- They are using piracy channels to distribute music freely.
Randy Saaf from Mediaedge really only had one point:
- Piracy is stealing. We want people to buy music legally instead and hopefully if we make it harder to find people will.
- He was behind the Madonna campaign to try and get one up on pirates.
I suspect Randy is fighting a losing battle. People will just find other ways and different channels to distribute pirated content. The guy did get a bit of a hard time at the panel. But I was really interested in the idea of piracy as a valid marketing device. I initially thought that no publisher would be willing to experiment with this, in my experience agents are wary of putting a few sample chapters online, so going the whole hog and encouraging piracy probably wouldn’t be met with a favourable response. But I was pleasantly surprised to read via Teleread that
No Starch Press is using P2P sites to
distribute a couple of their titles. They then hope that people who like will buy the pbook. Teleread also has an article suggesting that ebook publishers could use file sharing sites
to their advantage.
Categories: sxsw2008
Tagged: how piracy will save the music industry, sxsw, sxsw2008
A look at how interactive gaming, storytelling and puzzles can engage users with your brand. Movie and TV producers are increasingly using these tactics to promote their entertainment but is it possible for other brands to provide such experiences for their adorers or to attract new customers.
Rachel Clarke, Bibrik Ltd
Dan Hon, CEO, Six to Start
Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher, Penguin
Roo Reyolds, Metaverse Evangelist, IBM
Notable campaigns using games
- Rather than interruption marketing, games offer a way to interact and converse with consumers.But, Jeremy did point out that Penguin’s treasure hunt game for The Malice Box [Jeremy I'm assuming it was this, correct me if I'm wrong] didn’t work as a marketing tool. But paying bookshops for space did.
- Know your audience and know that there are multiple levels of players. Distinction online between Hardcore and Casual users. But no one ever talks about the Hardcore television audience, the kind of people that are really into LOST or a soap and then go online to find out more.
Convincing brands to use games
- Penguin has an ‘innovations fund’. So projects like ‘we tell stories’ aren’t paid for by the marketing department.[All publishers should do this, the larger ones can certainly find the money. It makes far more sense than using marketing budgets for digital projects as many marketing departments are set up for traditional marketing and really only plan far enough ahead to put together outdoor marketing. Whereas a good digital campaign, whether it's a game, blog or a user-generated project needs a lot of time to plan, execute and fix the inevitable issues that will unexpectedly crop up.] Penguin want to explore the future of the story.
Metrics
- Need to think about how you can use metrics to measure the depth of involvement. Are the traditional results of unique visitors and page views enough?
Games vs traditional marketing
- It needs to be relevant to the core of the brand.
- It’s all about collaboration. The sharing of knowledge and working together to solve a game is a powerful medium.
- Short term campaigns don’t necessarily make sense when you’ve spent time fostering a passionate user base. The Office Max Christmas Elves game was brought back each Christmas and has increased in success year after year. 1 million users first year, 11 million the second year.
- Niche success has an impact, it doesn’t have to have a mass appeal.
Are there brands that can’t use games as a tool?
- Definitely. The game has to be tailored to the campaign and brand.
Points arising from the Q&A
- You have to offer something to the consumer and community, two-way relationship.
- Jeremy made a good point that other publishers aren’t our competition, games are. We need to engage people with other ways of storytelling.
- Educational games can have the same objectives as the classroom. If a child reaches a certain level, or completes a task then we can prove that they have achieved specific learning objectives.
Categories: sxsw2008
Tagged: Dan Hon, Jeremy Ettinghausen, Rachel Clarke, Roo Reynolds, stories games and your brand, sxsw, sxsw2008
Today’s ‘totally wired’ teens have driven the early adoption of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook as well as many widgets and applications. They are also super communicators who can’t live without their phones. At the same time, they embrace technology for different reasons than adult early adopters. Anastasia Goodstein, founder of Ypulse.com and author of Totally Wired: What teens and tweens are really doing online, will moderate a discussion with six teens (boys and girls) between the ages of 13-17 giving you an opportunity to ask them questions about what works online and on cell phones, and more importantly, what doesn’t.
Anastasia Goodstein Publisher, Ypulse
Favourite sites?
- Goodreads – “I can’t justify spending money on a book without reading other people’s reviews first”
- Purevolume – “I couldn’t live without music.”
- MySpace, Facebook and Hi5 – ‘because you can customise it and communicate with friends.” [pretty much all the panel were on MySpace and Facebook - one of the twelve year old girls was registered on MS as a 16 year-old]
- Digg – “I like keeping up to date with news.”
- Hypster.com – “I can find underground music and make playlists.”
- Seventeen.com – “I can stay up to date with hairstyles.”
What turns you off on a site?
- Ads/pop ups. The entire panel got quite passionate about hating advertising. But interestingly, they wouldn’t mind contextual ads relevant to them. One of the boys would like to hear about the next Halo game or to see as for trainers on NBA.com.
- Sites that take too long to load.
Social networking fatigue. Are you using networking sites less frequently?
- One of the boys said that he used to check his MySpace all the time, refreshing every five minutes but now he only goes there once he gets a friend request.
- The continual updates and add-ons aren’t needed. It’s more dull now.
- It’s just for keeping in contact with friends, if there was a better way I wouldn’t use it.
Do you use email?
- I only got an email account because I need an email address to register for sites.
- Only to contact family and teachers.
- Use on-campus school email for keeping in touch with teachers.
- Have an email account for professional type letters that you can’t use MySpace for.
What about instant messenger?
- Pretty much a resounding no, which surprised me. They seemed to view it as quite a babyish thing that they used when they were younger.
What about phones?
- All the panel except for one had a phone.
- They don’t get ringtones from the internet – they’re too expensive.
- None of them used their phones to get onto the internet, they can’t afford it.
- They all liked to play games like pacman and tetris on their phones.
- Texting seemed to be the main use for their phones.
- Never use wallpapers.
- They do listen to music on their phones.
- They don’t watch videos on their phones, but one of the panel said that they did record video on their phone.
Virtual worlds, do you use them?
- X-box live – likes it because you can play other people.
- Zwinky – Used to use it, but it’s really dull and boring. “People used to ask me where I live and that puts me off.”
- Runescape, Gaia - But $15 a month is off putting, I’d rather buy another game for a console. “I’m in high-school now, I don’t have time for that”
- Yahoo avatar – I like to customise my own avatar
User-generated content. Have you ever produced any?
- This got a really positive response from the panel and was something they’d all be keen to get involved with.
- One of the boys had entered a YouTube competition.
- A few of the panel said that if they had a camera, they would have entered something similar too.
- “It’s really cool because you can interact with something someone is trying to sell you.”
- In response to the question ‘would brands who use UGC put you off?’: “no, it would make me respect them more because they know how hard it is to produce something creative and they think you’re capable of doing it too.”
Do you keep up with the news?
- Yes, I like staying up to date with Iraq etc.
- Interested in the debate for President and uses YouTube, GoogleNews and wikipedia to keep up.
- One of the panel said that The Onion had caught her attention because she likes likes things that are funny or present the news from a different angle.
- They don’t ever visit CNN or The New York Times etc.
Do you use the internet to support charitable causes?
- They liked sites that used games to make them aware of causes.
- “Doing stuff online gets my attention.”
Do you watch movies online? And if so, where?
- One of the panel watched foreign dramas online that she couldn’t get anywhere else. Used them to learn languages.
- Most of the panel used network sites to catch up on shows they had missed. ABC family etc.
- One of the girls watches the Disney Channel both online and on her phone.
One of the audience asked if the panel would get involved in a campaign to stop all advertising.
- They said that the advertising helped fund the sites the visited so weren’t entirely sure that they would help stop it entirely.
- “Ads should match your interests.”
- One of the boys said that ads should only be allowed on sites where you’re actually going to buy something: Amazon, Ebay etc.
Do you visit brand sites? Do you play branded games?
- “I like to play the games. They’re addictive.”
- If they did something interesting, then yes I would.
- They would visit brand sites to enter competitions.
What about flash games, miniclip etc?
- Yes I like to go to addictinggames.com.
- “If I’m really bored I’ll play them. I think they’re cool.”
- “I like to go to any site that has games. People send them to me.”
- Newgrounds I go there to play whatever games that aren’t blocked at school.
- A few of the panel could remove blocks with proxy servers.
Do you make plans to see friends online?
- They all made plans either in person or by text/phone, but not online.
- “You’re not sure they’ll get the message online.”
What don’t marketers understand?
- Unless ads are clever they don’t grab my attention.
It was a really interesting panel. I was particularly curious as to what teens are doing as the project I’m working on is aimed at tweens. But I was surprised that despite the fact they’re clearly knowledgeable about technology and the internet, they were really only using it for typical teenage things. Friends, music and entertainment were their primary activities online.
Categories: sxsw2008
Tagged: sxsw, sxsw2008, what teens want online, Ypulse
