Adventures in My Mind
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Mar 1, 2007
What's a Post-Scarcity Dinosaur to do?
If I were the Oscars (or Viacom)
Jeff Jarvis starts this post with:If I had the Oscars or Viacom — both of whom pulled their clips off YouTube — here’s what I’d do to deal with — no, to exploit and profit from — the inevitable trend toward your audience promoting and distributing your content:Let's concentrate on that last bit, "the inevitable trend toward your audience promoting and distributing your content." As in gratis, free, no-charge marketing.
When will the dinosaurs wake up and realize the tar is lapping at their heels ... no, their knees. People who post your content do so mostly because they love it or it's weird or it's funny or a combination of all. They are telling the world, "Hey, look at this cool/weird/stupid/fun thing that I found." And this does not cost the dinosaurs a dime in their already ridiculously high marketing budgets.
Here's a thought: Imagine if the dinosaurs spent millions less in marketing and litigation and instead spent that money on content generation.
Imagine if they actually cared about their audiences and their brand lovers and worked with them to help get their clips onto blogs and sharing sites!
"But ... but ... but ...," all of you freemarketers belch. "How does a copyright holder benefit? How do they make money from YouTube? Why it's un-American!" No, not really. It's just a differnt business model. Think of it as one of those precious life boats still floating as the Titanic spiraled to the bottom of the North Atlantic.
Certainly Google, et al, would be open to discussing revenue sharing from their bilions in advertising that they generate. All it would take is each of the Hollywood studios to send a letter to Sergei and Larry saying that they would like to make all of their content available on YouTube, but for a price. Do you really think that they would say no? In exchange for some revenue sharing they get no more threats of litigation and a flood of new content that users would immediatley upload. I think they would fall all over themselves to make such a deal.
And what do the copyright holders get? Exposure. Revenue. Good press. Free marketing. And what if they went a step further and ended each clip with "If you liked this clip, visit www.dinosaurmedia.com/yourfavorite show to purchase the entire show."?
Yes, just imagine.
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 10:28 AM
