On February 5, 2009, Walter Isaacson writes in TIME Magazine about the self-destruction of newspapers, with implications for all media. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191,00.html
Ironically, I read Walter Isaacson’s TIME article while watching Festival Express. It is a documentary about a concert tour in Canada (The Band, Buddy Guy, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, Shanana, etc,) in 1970. One of the storylines is the riot started by protesters who thought the outdoor concert should be free. The promoter ended up losing his shirt on the tour, but sold the rights to this documentary of the tour including “behind the scenes” video of the artists jamming and partying on the train that transported them across Canada.
To establish my point of view, I think the solution to the Festival Express promoter’s dilemma, in part, made possible by the internet today, would be . . . First, move the concert inside to a private venue and broadcast the audio outside for free (which anyone within earshot of an outdoor concert could listen to for free). I would offer nearly live content updates on radio station websites and blogs for free to sample the event, with a link to buy a trial to an online video of one event as a guest, with limited privileges, and a tour membership with live “behind the scenes” train jamming interactivity with artists.
Back to Mr. Isaacson’s article . . . I agree with Mr. Isaacson that the industry has self-destructed. It is not just media. I think our economic woes are related to the self-destruction of systems that create new value in our economy. As one who worked on the first ever speculative pitch (where the agency signs over their ideas in order to win the right to pitch) by the Leo Burnett Company, I witnessed the ad industry self-destruct, too. Then there’s Hollywood. Even pharmaceutical companies have gone to the Hollywood model where the little guy takes the risk and the pharmaceutical company makes all the money. Unfortunately, when the creative guys can’t afford to create, we are not optimizing new value creation. So is it really so surprising that the finance folks ended up over-leveraging mature industries?
But enough philosophizing . . . I disconnect with Mr. Isaacson’s focus on the micro-payment solution. With today’s fragmented audience, audience acquisition costs are increasing exponentially. To realize a sustainable return on audience building today, we need an integrated product and marketing approach that converts free “sampling” to paid trial to subscription.
© 2009 Katherine Warman Kern
