Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: media

  • News organisations and social media copyright truths

    News organisations and social media copyright truths

    One of the long running scandals of modern journalism is how media organisations have misused social media.

    Haitian photographer Daniel Moran’s victory over Agence France Press and Getty Images is a reminder to journalists and media organisations that when something is posted to social media it doesn’t mean it’s free to use.

    Since the rise of social media sites it’s become common for journalists to grab images or videos from them to illustrate stories. At best, the media organisations have credited the sites they’ve stolen the content to allay copyright concerns.

    The problem is media companies and journalists don’t have the right to do that; users don’t give away their rights when they post to Twitter or Facebook — they grant a license to the company to use those that content as they wish.

    If a photographer, writer, computer programmer or musician wants to give away their work for free then there’s a range of ways they can do it and many are happy to make their efforts available to the community without charge. It just happens posting to a social media site isn’t one of those ways.

    Hopefully journalists and media organisations will learn a lesson from Daniel Moran’s case, social media doesn’t mean open slather.

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  • Crumbling cookies

    Crumbling cookies

    On the last ABC radio spot we looked at how our data is being tracked, in the following 702 Sydney program with Linda Mottram we looked at the role of Internet cookies and online privacy.

    Cookies – tiny text files that store visitors’ details on websites – have long been the mainstay of online commerce as they track the behaviour of web surfers.

    For media companies, Cookies have become a key way of identifying and understanding their readers making these web tracking tools an essential part of an already revenue challenged online news model.

    Cookies also present security and privacy risks as, like all Big Data, the information held within them can be cross-referenced with other sources to create a picture of and often identify an internet users.

    These online data crumbs often follow us around the web as advertising platforms and other services, particularly social media sites, monitor our behaviour and the European Union’s Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications is the first step by regulators to crack down on the use of cookies.

    Similar moves are afoot in the US as regulators start to formulate rules around the use of Cookies, in an Australian context, the National Privacy Principles apply however they are of limited protection as most cookies are not considered to be ‘identifiable data’, the same get out used by US government agencies to monitor citizens’ communications.

    Generally these rules promise to be so cumbersome for online services Google is looking at getting rid of cookies altogether .

    Ditching cookies gives Google a great deal of power with its existing ways of tracking users and ties into Eric Scmidt’s stated aim of making the company’s Google Plus service an identity service that verifies we are who we say we are online.

    Whether Google does succeed in becoming the web’s definitive identity service remains to be seen, we are though in a time where the questions of what is acceptable in tracking our online behaviour are being examined.

    For the media companies and advertising, putting the control of online analytics in the hands of one or two companies may also add another level of middle man in a market where margins are already thin if not non-existent.

    It may well be that we look back on the time when we were worried about  internet cookies tracking us as being a more innocent time.

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  • Fighting the content wars

    Fighting the content wars

    I’m moderating keynote Q and A’s at the ADMA Global Forum today. One clear message from the international speakers’ presentations is how original, unique content is one the key planks of a modern media strategy.

    “Content will be king” says McKinsey’s Joshua Goff, a thought echoed by Weiden and Kennedy’s Husani Oakley.

    During one of the breakout sessions, the AFL’s Sam Walch explained the sporting code’s strategy of using content to retain supporters and expand the sport.

    The fascinating thing about this content strategy is how organisations are having to deal with gathering unique, compelling material.

    For many businesses, getting customers to contribute material makes sense. Josh Goff showed how some businesses, even in the B2B space, were using user generated content to get a buzz happening around their sites.

    Others are commissioning their own work with the AFL employing nearly fifty journalists to provide content.

    What’s particularly interesting about the AFL is how this threatens broadcasters and the print media business models which increasingly rely on ‘events’ like sports. This is something I might explore on the blog over the next few days.

    In the afternoon ADMA session Michael Bayle, formerly of ESPN, described how much of that content will be accessed on mobile devices. Interestingly ESPN has the greater share of mobile visitors for US Sunday football despite not owning the broadcast rights. This is both an opportunity and challenge for rights holders, sporting organisations and media disruptors.

    The key take away from this morning’s ADMA sessions though is that we are going to be drowning in content marketing over the next couple of years. The challenge for those businesses engaging in those wars is to make themselves heard over the noise.

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  • Never going to let you go – the failing businesses clinging desperately to baby boomers

    Never going to let you go – the failing businesses clinging desperately to baby boomers

    Probably the driving factor of the consumerist society’s development was the baby boomers’ growing up.

    Through the last fifty years everything from Coca-Cola to baby products and hair loss treatments has been aimed at the cohort born between 1945 and 65.

    For many businesses and marketers this group has been so profitable it’s been hard to let them go.

    The US motor industry is a good example of this with Bloomberg reporting the over 55 age groups are dominating domestic car sales as younger folk turn away from car ownership.

    A similar thing is happening in Australia as TV executives decide that competing with the internet for millennials is too difficult so sticking with the over 50s market is safer.

    “We’d go out of business if we stayed with our traditional demographic of 16-39.” Channel Ten CEO Hamish McLennan told the Mumbrella360 conference in Sydney earlier this year.

    The problem for both the US motor manufacturers and Australian TV stations is the trends are against them.

    For TV stations trying to compete against the internet, the older age groups are following their kids across to the web at the same time that they are beginning to save for retirement.

    That need to save is also working against the car dealers, while many boomers fawn over new cars a large number simply aren’t going to be able to afford these indulgences. It’s not a good prospect for the motor industry.

    In the meantime, younger people are turning away from the motor car, Bloomberg quotes University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute s researcher Michael Sivak who penned a report on generational shifts in the US motor industry.

    “I have a son who lives in San Francisco; when I get a new car and I tell him what I got, he couldn’t care less,” Sivak said. “To him, it’s a means of getting from A to B. He goes into great lengths about taking a BART or bus, even though it takes him an hour longer. He does have a car, but uses it very rarely.”

    The movement away from the motor car indicates something much more profound about western society — if the baby boomer represented the age of consumerism, the entire Twentieth Century was defined by the automobile.

    For politicians and town planners wedded to a 1950s view of economic development, it may be they are making terrible and expensive mistakes in pushing freeway and other road projects.

    While aging baby boomers purr over their expensive cars, the forces of history may be passing them by. Those businesses pandering to those older groups might just want to consider whether they want to be left behind as the economy, and the kids, move on.

    It’s comfortable to cling onto what has worked for the last fifty years, but sometimes the lowest risk lies in letting go.

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  • Facebook as the family newsletter

    Facebook as the family newsletter

    This week’s Royal birth was a curious mix of the old and modern – a cringing fawning by the media over the family and baby which wouldn’t have been out of place of place in a black and white 1950s newsreel  coupled with a modern frenzy on social media.

    In the social media world, the Washington Post reports there were almost one million mentions of the royal birth on Facebook in the hour following the news. It’s an interesting reflection of how communications have evolved.

    Where once we shared news of life events by letter, then telegraph and later the phone; we now broadcast our own news over social media services, particularly Facebook.

    Increasingly for families, Facebook has been the main way people keep in touch with their more distant friends and relatives. Your cousin in Brazil, aunty in Germany or former workmate in Thailand can all keep up with the news in your life through social networks.

    The Royal family itself is an example of this, having set up their own Facebook page for the new arrival and it shows of how ‘weak ties’ are strengthened by the social media connections.

    Another aspect of social media is the ability to filter out noise. If you’re like me, the royal baby is about as interesting as origami classes but  I was spared most of the hype by not looking at broadcast media and sticking to my online services where it was just another story.

    While being able to filter out what you consider ‘noise’ risks creating écho chambers’ it also means the online channels are becoming more useful for both relevant news and family events.

    That’s an important change in personal communications we need to consider. We also have to remember those baby photos we post to Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest are now licensed to those services as well.

    One of the great challenges for this decade is balancing the privacy and security aspects of these new communications channels with the usefulness of the services.

    In the meantime though they are a great substitute for a family newsletter.

    Image courtesy of Hortongrou through sxc.hu

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