What I Saw at Streaming Media East
I was lucky enough to be invited to speak on a panel at today's session of Streaming Media East by Chris Brogan. The topic was "Lifecasting: The New Broadcasting Platform," and I was seemingly the odd man out, as I was joined by the likes of Sarah Austin of Pop17.com, Steve Garfield of SteveGarfield.com and Sariq Reichert of Flixwagon. I was the only one on the panel who wasn't livestreaming from a Nokia N95, so I felt a little bit out of my league.But I like to think that I added a bit of reality and business sense to the proceedings, as there were quite a few people there who, in addition to wanting to learn about lifecasting, also wanted to understand how it applies to businesses. I had a few key takeaways about lifecasting that I'd like to share with you here.
Trust
A question out of the gate was, "Why would advertisers be interested in this?" It's a good question that plagues a lot of social media tools. Invariably when customers are asked whom they trust most, the answer is "Someone like me." The 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer Bears this out (visual below). When citizen journalists take to the airwaves with their videos, it's inherently more credible than any scripted, edited piece by a company.
Engagement
The next (predictable) challenge was when some audience members seemed to be dismayed at the number of viewers for some livecasting shows. Numbers in the low thousands were quoted, for frame of reference. But they were missing the point that all of the viewers watch these shows because they want to; they're actively seeking out the content.
My take is that, as a marketer, I'd rather have 100% engagement from 1,000 people than 1% engagement from 1 million people.
Measurement
I'm sure you're following the progression here. The next issue up was: "How can you tell if your viewers are engaged?" I think we all admitted that the jury's still out on this, but that the real innovators would be able to develop metrics for length of views, which content in videos is most compelling (including using embedded comments), etc. There's a lot of room for growth in this area.
Content vs. personality
One of the problems that I noticed is that there seems to be an abundance of data/information out there, much of which is just not that interesting. How often do I need to see someone sitting around their living room, or doing a talking head video? Puh-lease.
The truly compelling content - and I'd argue verticals are key here - is what's going to be of the most interest to advertisers. This means consistency and quality.
Final note
When asked for our final thoughts on the future of lifecasting, I closed with what is a sneak preview of my chapter in the Age of Conversation 2:
When you think about it, the human race can be divided into two camps: exhibitionists and voyeurs. Between these two groups, there'll be enough fuel to keep lifecasting going for some time. Taking Andy Warhol's famous phrase and turning it on its head, "In the future, we'll all have 15 minutes of privacy."
Do you have any thoughts on the prevalence of lifecasting/livecasting? I'd love to hear what you have to say on the future of this nascent activity.
Labels: age of conversation, speaking, Video
Posted by Scott Monty at 9:55 PM
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hey scott-
to address the issue of how marketers/advertisers will get any use out of lifecasting, or more generally live vlogging (because it's really just an extension of vlogging isn't it?):
marketers/advertisers are going to have limited to no interest in attaching their brand to sporadically produced talking head videos with varied & unfocused topics. brands want to know what context they're going to appear in, right? the folks (vloggers) who have been successful in attracting ad $$ have been highly engaging daily producers with a real focus or niche. lots of work. very competitive. you've gotta be ze or close to it if you want to make any cash developing web shows to sell to advertisers. same goes for live video, but even more pressure because you can't edit and who knows when the context/conversation will spin out of control.
i think the marketer play for video, especially live video, is event coverage. you talk about verticals...this isn't going to work so well for a business like insurance, but for lifestyle brands and verticals like automotive or fashion it works. i'm talking about brands/advertisers producing their own content rather than attaching ads to someone else's content. mostly you see this now in the music industry, like 50cent on kyte for ex. but i'm betting we'll see more of this soon. think live from the geneva auto show floor with the designer of the new vw microcar, or in the pit with puma's ferrari f1 crew or backstage at prada's fall collection show.
Scott:
Nice post. I'm also not sure how interesting people's lives are to the general public unless you're some sort of super voyeur -- and there are already sites for that that charge more than twenty buck/month to watch.
I'm in agreement with Owen's
comment that it doesn't seem that great for advertisers -- too little control, fairly boring content ("ooh, he just stared at his TV for three hours . . . "). Even if advertisers produced some sort of product placement vlog/livecast, it would seem very transparently "markety," and therefore the opposite of what (v)blogging & social media are all about anyway.
Owen's idea of event livecasting is cool, but then again, it becomes overly markety, a webcast from a major marketer.
Perhaps from the standpoint of branding and customer relations, perhaps a company could livecast themselves as they talk about marketing, or have somethign set up in the common areas cafes of the corporate environment that show life in the company -- though it may not be that interesting either.
Conversely, Ford did something like that a while back in which their online campaign took you to a site hat had footage of boardrooms as they discussed their biz problems - I believe it was the Bold Moves campaign, and it was mildly fascinating. Though not live, it was pretty raw and seemed unedited.
This post is interesting stuff.
Owen & Agricola - thank you for your lengthy and thoughtful comments. I agree that the fly-by-night lifecasters aren't going to attract any brands. The content has to be interesting, topical, unique, and predictable - not someone sitting around in their pajamas.
I'm not aware of the specifics with that part of the Bold Moves campaign, but I do recall reading a story in the Wall Street Journal recently (Candid Camera: Trove of Videos Vex Wal-Mart) about Wal-Mart suing a video company they worked with for 30 years. Evidently, there was no written contract, so a new executive cut the company off (Wal-Mart being responsible for 90% of their revenue). The video production company's response was to take the video footage they shot of Wal-Mart executives and grant access to anyone who wanted to purchase it. In that case, the behind-the-scenes boardroom activity has created a lot of demand - particularly from trial lawyers. :)
Thanks for being on the panel Scott. You added a great deal and your final thought was an excellent wrap-up to the conversation. If you have any extra minutes a privacy, be sure to share!
Keep it spicy!
Loved your post, makes a lot of sense, people so often go of on tangents or want to commercialism everything they do online.
And the OOOing and AAhhing of live video can be extremely annoying.
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