Frontiering Talk

Here’s a great story about a band who was practicing some dance steps in the backyard for a Video they were making for a song. Now you can’t watch yourself backwards, so they mounted a camera to film themselves so they could make sure they had it right.

One of their girlfriends thought the video was so great and she begged them to release it as their official video instead of the “real” professional video that they had been practicing for. The band laughed at her. Not to be deterred, she posted the video online and emailed a couple of friends to get a second opinion.

Two point five million downloads later …. Full story here thanks to Marketingsherpa. The video clip is here.

I think the message here is that people want to see real people saying real things, telling stories, or dancing or singing. And you know what? consumers want to see the real product and interact with stories about real people using the product in real life … Hopefully advertising is starting to understand this.

Shankar Gupta over at Mediapost, writes this article about Microsofts plans to use it’s AdCenter to support it’s online office suite.

Industry expert Jim Spaeth, a partner at Sequent Partners, said Microsoft’s move shows that the company intends to monetize users’ desktops. “Just as television has been the dominant, ‘must have’ medium for reaching consumers in the home and radio the equivalent for the car, the computer is the key channel in the workplace,” he said. “Microsoft’s recent announcement signals their intent to monetize the media potential of this channel which they alone dominate.”

Microsoft already has it’s Live.com site in Beta which perhaps describes a look/feel of what might be coming for an online office suite.

The key challenge for these initiatives is to provide relevance in the ads. I don’t want my Office Paperclip to start selling me a new line of toothpaste!

Consumers are now given the opportunity to publish and share in some of the traffic earnings with Revver.

Anyone can submit their videos on any topic. When you upload a video, Revver attaches a RevTag — a single frame ad at the end of the video. Every time someone clicks on the ad, the associated revenue is split between the media creator and Revver in a 50/50 split. Note: The site was running a bit slow when I went there.

This is yet another site that is making it possible for everyday consumers to get their content published and in this case, generate some revenue.

Move over piano man … you can now get your lyrics sung to you online.
Just key in some words and press the play button.

Try it out!

We have all seen Audience participation in various tv shows such as game shows, or debates. Some, like “Who wants to be a Millionaire” even have the provision for the contestant to “phone a friend”. But imagine if you could gather together a participative audience of people both in the studio, and dialled in via Webcam for a Conversational TV?

Well Nessuno.tv has just pioneered the concept with what they call Participative TV. You can read the full article here.

I think it’s just another move to allow real consumers to tell the real story with real opinions rather than having media controlled by a few powerful editors.