Return to planet Microsoft

Here are some notes from a speech I gave yesterday at the UK arm of Microsoft Online Service Group’s* end of year conference. I worked there for 5 years before joining Channel 4 so I decided to speak about things I had changed my views on since leaving.

* (MSN, Windows Live, Microsoft Advertising)

1) Content

a. MSN is better at content than it thinks it is. It has a self confidence problem. It's not a problem Bebo seems to have and yet Bebo has no more right to be a "media company" than MSN does.

b. But content without Talent is karaoke. Jamie, Gordon, Davina, Jon, Krishnan, Kevin etc makes a big difference.

c. Might developer Talent; that’s to say developers as creators of new forms of content, be the untapped source of a new wave of creativity that Microsoft itself could mine?

2) Distribution

a. I’ve written about this before.

b. Not many people agree with me but I’m not so sure Distribution is the silver bullet for broadcasters seeking online reach. Our content is still only a decision away from everywhere else. What broadcasters need to do is to “leverage” their dwindling media foothold in a ruthlessly focused way. [note: the Hulu experience, thanks Louise, might force me to re-evaluate apropos long-form content].

c. But, since we are distributing Clips to everyone, it’s notable that MSN is doing a great job of being a good partner. The value probably lies in the tone of the partnership, rather than the deal itself.

3) What’s Microsoft OSG’s greatest strength?

a. I would have said the installed based in Hotmail and IM when I worked there

b. I avoided saying “the people”. Just.

c. It's Microsoft Advertising. I think what they already have is practically irreplicable. They’ve been doing online display sales really quite well for many years now. It seems to me only a matter of time (perhaps quite a long time) before big, scary, almost unthinkable conversations happen between old media and Microsoft about how best to monetise their digital audiences.

I was asked some good questions:

1) Am I worried about iPlayer eating the UK’s bandwidth? Answer: yes. This is going to be like the 10p tax rate: It’s come up. We've forgotten about it. But it'll come back and bite us in the future.

2) Am I the answer to C4’s funding gap? Answer: absolutely not, though I hope to contribute my bit. [Insert wry observation that the license-fee is the answer to questions 1 and 2]

3) Who’s going to sell the common-areas of Kangaroo? Answer: “Dunno. Are you pitching?” Answer: “Yes”. See 3 c) above.

Very good to be invited back.

Blogmarking Radiohead remix

When something's this good, bookmarking with Delicious just isn't enough.


Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

The Mexican media stand off

Web-based brand advertising formats ought really to have evolved much more quickly than they have.

Here we are in 2008 still trading in banner ads, albeit of different shapes and sizes.

But who's going to make the first move away from today's display formats? The media owners? No, because we don't want to sell what no-one's buying. The media buyers? No, because they're in a fast-moving, low-margin business in which rocking the boat costs money. The creative agencies? No (though they may try), because they have little say at the buyer / seller intersection. The advertisers themselves? No, because, on the whole, they rely on the media agencies to advise them.

So who could make the first move? Only someone big enough to move the market. Microhoo! could have done this; maybe still will.

[ image source: http://www.cartoonbank.com/ ]

Does linear TV's future lie in marketing on-demand content?

I saw a demo of Kangaroo yesterday and really liked it. It got me wondering about the long-term future of linear broadcast TV.

I wonder whether the linear broadcast's role might one day be as a sort of showreel preview / marketing vehicle for material which is pre-loaded in on-demand space. In other words, broadcast the first episode of a series over and over again on linear in order to pique people's interest enough for them to delve into the on-demand space and gorge themselves on the whole series or series (pl). So for example, one might broadcast just the first episode of Brideshead Revisited at irregular intervals, with the whole series loaded into the archive.

Not sure what to watch on-demand? Switch to linear and see if there's anything good being broadcast (promoted). In that respect linear TV would become more like commercial music radio: playing singles to promote purchase of whole albums and back-catalogues.

Channel4.com prototype: Guggenheim versus the "disinterested container".

To help us rethink Channel4.com we assembled a diverse group of clever people at the end of 2007 and tried, in a day, to come up with "the answer" to the level of page designs and user journeys. It was hard; I think some people thought it couldn't be done. But in the end we had four of five answers to the question as to what Channel4.com should be and how it should work.

The new proposition we are working to: "The authoritative source of information and content related to Channel 4 television programmes". Like all good propositions, kind of obvious.

This was one of several strands of work which have resulted in our having built a prototype / demo of the new service. We've user tested it and so on (note to self: we should make it public shouldn't we?) and now we've asked the original group to come back and review it for us.

A couple of interesting things arise. First: if you tell someone they're an expert reviewer, they're hardly likely to say "great job; faultless; I've nothing to add". Second: one-way feedback is incredibly frustrating because you (I anyway) want to talk to the feedbacker. We should have done interviews, not invited a discussion on Basecamp.

Anyway. The most interesting part of the feedback we've had is the difference of opinion in the role of the product (which I call the "vessel" or "container") in relation to the content. Steve accuses us (rightly as it happens) of creating a nice looking but basically "disinterested" container for the content and the guys from OstModern agree, citing the Guggenheim museum in Manhattan as an example of a content-container that's so much more than a container. On the other side of the debate, C4's own Matt Locke is more of a white-cube fan as, decidedly, is Andy from Isotoma. Funnily enough I was piqued to read a little more about the Guggenheim and found that by many it's not rated as an exhibition space because the building does too much. Read all about it here (under History, paragraph 4). Having said that, I myself have visited the museum because of the building and so the argument goes around.

So .. one to think more about. Let the content do the talking or does the "vessel" need a life of its own?

Blogarithm

Distribute or die? I wonder.

"Distribute or die" is a commonly accepted rule of online survival. I worked at both ends of the equation at Microsoft where I was a man more distributed to than distributing.

There's little doubt that if you're small online and you want reach online, one of the things you should do is to get out there and find your audience. If you're online plankton and you've been half awake for the last year there's a good chance you've been creating widgets and feeds and free content and well .. doing almost anything to get yourself noticed where everyone is. And everyone's on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube.

Aren't they?

Well, yes.

But I wonder whether there's such a pressing need for big media to share value with big new media through complex distribution deals that shore up the audience's engagement with the social networks, reinforcing the need (if there was one in the first place) to distribute. If the content's as good as or better than the nicked stuff , the brand's strong and the marketing through the "old" media channels is consistent, won't the audience be prepared to go to the content (bearing in mind all the effort it takes is a click), rather than insisting it comes to them?

I do wonder whether "old" media, startled by some big opaque numbers, underestimates itself.