The Rights Marketing Company’s blog

Delighted that a recent metaphor developed in our TouchStone framework development work with Bacardi Global Brands’ Digital and Insight and Planning teams, is gathering currency amongst both friends and colleagues …

If you watch this and then this first …

20th century media was about targeting and hitting consumers with the same message repeatedly - and repeatably. All the energy was provided by the planning and buying investment of the brand. We can also call this MacroMedia. This is where the bowling analogy seems to explain the dynamic neatly … whereas …

In the 21st century, we score highest - as per the pinball analogy - when we get the ball (the brand) into the high-scoring bumper zone at the top of the table. This is relatively out of control, serendipitous, and the only control we have is the feeble flippers at the bottom of the board. And we use those only to try to get the ball back up those riotous bumpers - just like tribes of networked consumers, who when they take on a piece of media or an idea and start kicking it about, brand awareness and often equity explode upwards. We also call this MicroMedia.

Key takeaway? The energy in the second model - the pinball machine - is primarily owned by the consumer tribes. Excessive brand energy? Well, neatly, it just tilts the whole machine and game over.

I love this job sometimes!

Wonderful story in the Observer today about the restored version of “Help!” which is showing tonight on BBC 4. Many years after the film was made (obviously) Dick Lester got a formal letter from MTV declaring him, for the work he did directing both of the early Beatles films, “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!”, the father of the modern pop video. His response, apparently, was to IMMEDIATELY write back demanding a blood test! I love the “immediately” …

Am watching the film now with the kids dipping in and out between it and Bebo … Whatever’s happened since - and with Lennon’s murder (a movie about that just hitting the screens in London if you’re feeling an excess of Xmas cheer), Harrison’s death of cancer, and now the whole McCartney divorce thing - there’s been a fair bit to feel dismayed by for a Beatles fan over the decades. Wonderful to get back to unadulterated Fab Four.

I still think the best thing about them was the laughs … I love the story of Lennon, cornered by a US journo: “John! John! Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?” Responded he, without missing the all-important Beat: “He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles.”

Because I had nothing to say!

Since October 2006 we’ve been working with O2 - more recently their owner, Telefonica really - and Bacardi Global Brands on initiatives that have taken our work and our thinking in very exciting new directions. We’re delving deep in to 21st century media strategy, we developed The TouchStone framework for analyzing and evaluating 360 degree brand communication programmes, and more recently have been exploring advanced mobile marketing strategies.

I feel so privileged - despite the associated stresses - to have the opportunity to do this work. We have a way to go yet before the business is 100% stabilised, but it’s looking OK.

Tell you what … this blogging business ebbs and flows for me … for 3 months or more I’ve had little that I wanted to communicate outside of the work I do with the very exciting Rights Marketing Company, now well into its second year and very much on a roll.

Couple of things I plan to revisit over the coming weeks in this space … the growing relationship between music and advertising, the issue of media value in the context of a brand new set of consumer experiences, and finally - and perhaps more drily - the fascinating theoretical work we’re doing on the strategic impact for enterprises of the move from value chain to ecosystems.

Worth commenting that the BBC is capturing 58% of all online audiences for the World Cup … a big enough number to get me blogging again after an embarrassingly long gap!

…. courtesy of the ever-watchful Michael Parekh, a piece from the NYT that's a must-read for all students of online music - and culcha …

REMEMBER that Mozart concert you wanted to get to last month? No, not that one. (Or that one. Or those other 10 or 12.) The one with Lorin Maazel conducting the New York Philharmonic in the last three symphonies at Avery Fisher Hall.

Well, that concert will come
to you in high-quality sound on Tuesday, when DG Concerts offers it for
digital downloading via the iTunes Music Store (itunes.com).
What's more, two programs from the Los Angeles Philharmonic's hip
"Minimalist Jukebox" series, performed this weekend, are scheduled for
release through DG Concerts and iTunes on April 4. Although pricing is
not final, each live concert will probably cost about $10 to download,
less for complete individual works.

Having become pretty jaded with my current music collection, and also rather bored with iTunes, this wakes me up a bit. I look forward to finding out more - surely this is the stuff that makes online entertainment truly fresh and vibrant? 

Key thoughts from Scott Karp on the Reuters issue here.

Interesting short piece from BusinessWeek:

It appears that the people who visit a site through a search engine or a link are a different bunch than those who subscribe through an RSS feed. The people who go to the site through a browser might be shopping around for a wireless device so they would respond to an ad for wireless gadgets. But someone who subscribes a feed already has a BlackBerry and the gear that goes with it. An ad encouraging them to buy a BlackBerry or even to dump the device for a Treo wouldn’t work.

Michael and Umair Haque of Bubble Generation examine the state of play and strategic implications of Media 2.0 in the first of a series of podcasts.