(Credit:
Exhibitor Online)
A new study from Nokia predicts that by 2012, a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited, and shared within peer groups rather than being generated by traditional media.
Jointly conducted with the trend research firm The Future Laboratory, Nokia's study asked trend-setting consumers from 17 countries about their digital behaviors and lifestyles. The company also used information gathered from its 900 million customers as well as views of leading industry analysts.
"From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call 'circular.' The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up, and pass it on within their peer groups-- a form of collaborative social media," says Mark Selby, vice president of multimedia for Nokia. Nokia pinpoints four emerging trends that propel this kind of "circular entertainment": immersive living; geek culture; G tech; and localism.
Selby continues, "We think it will work something like this: someone shares video footage they shot on their mobile device from a night out with a friend. That friend takes that footage and adds an MP3 file--the sound track of the evening--then passes it to another friend. That friend edits the footage by adding some photographs and passes it on to another friend and so on. The content keeps circulating between friends, who may or may not be geographically close, and becomes part of the group's entertainment."
Tom Savigar, trends director at The Future Laboratory, adds, "Consumers are increasingly demanding that their entertainment be truly immersive, engaging, and collaborative. Whereas once the act of watching, reading, and hearing entertainment was passive, consumers now and in the future will be active and unrestrained by the ubiquitous nature of circular entertainment. Key to this evolution is consumers' basic human desire to compare and contrast, create and communicate. We believe the next episode promises to deliver the democracy politics can only dream of."
Of course, you have to take surveys sponsored by big brands with a grain of salt. Nokia's intent is obviously to ride the wave of a powerful current and promote its mobile devices as the venue where that new kind of "circular," convergent entertainment will take place. Moreover, user-generated content (and user-generated entertainment in particular) is neither a breathtakingly new phenomenon, nor is it beyond any dispute that the traditional networks will just sit and watch their dominance wane.
Nokia's study also ignores the fact that the distinction between traditional and "circular" entertainment is becoming increasingly difficult. In times of professional mash-ups, amateur reality TV, and 24/7 life-casting, where does original content end and recycled content start? What if traditional entertainment becomes a micro-format within user-generated entertainment and vice versa? Naturally, the two intermingle, and it may not even be too bold a statement to forecast that at some stage of a highly fragmented and collaborative distribution chain, all entertainment will be "circular" in 2012.
This is not the first attempt to challenge YouTube's gatekeeper position for viral video by establishing an alternative portal for sticky commercials closer to the original brand context. Microsoft and NBCU have launched Firebrand, an online and mobile platform to feature the "coolest" TV commercials. And NBCU's USA Network also plans to launch a site for new and classic TV spots next year. However, the branded portal spree may be a fad: Bud TV, Budweiser's proprietary user-generated entertainment channel, started off with high hopes that quickly diminished.
HoneyShed will face some daunting challenges, too. Having made it through the filter of the crowds, commercials with viral potential usually pop first on YouTube, and then float through the blogosphere. Only if HoneyShed manages to assert itself as a trusted destination for specialized branded entertainment, will it stand a chance to compete for a little piece of the large pie that the video portals own. To do so, it needs to build a critical mass of returning viewers. However, it is at least questionable--see Bud TV--whether there is more than just sporadic demand for brand-specific programming. I mean, one Sprite spot may be hilarious, but would you really want to have a regular feed of Sprite videos? For branded entertainment, you can reverse an old music biz proverb: it's the song and not the singer. Eyeballs are attracted by content, not brands. HoneyShed, therefore, must be either extremely good at curating content from myriad brands, or the brands themselves must be serious about becoming content companies.
The content shown on the site so far suggests the opposite. Sure, HoneyShed tries hard to tap into all the right trends: radical transparency (that is, blatant consumerism), social media features (social networking, embed/share capabilities), or conversational marketing (such as live chat facilities). But David Armano is right when he says that it still "feels like traditional advertising served up over the Internet."
If you want to talk about real innovation in online advertising, maybe life-casting is worth a look. Fast Company blogged about this awhile ago, and it's still a compelling idea: ads and product placements in live life-streams on networks like Justin.tv: "A Victoria's Secret shopping experience could be embedded onto the Web page where the video and chat are housed, with customers being enticed to click as each new outfit or item appears in the live video. The shopping experience would contain search functionality so that a customer could look up whichever item the current model is wearing and talking about."
For pessimists, this might mark the end of civilization (as we knew it), for web 2.0 acolytes it is an inevitable consequence of our new social media lifestyles: when social networking sites turn friends into business contacts and vice versa, when life-casts and mini-feeds exhibit each and every one of our acts and sentiments in real time, life itself might as well be utilized as the most powerful advertising format. To say that the boundaries between life and work, culture and commerce, private and public relations are becoming blurrier doesn't go far enough. They are not just becoming blurrier--these boundaries are in fact expanding as the new marketplaces for online interactions and transactions.
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