Digging deeper in digital

The other day I watched a programme on TV. Yes broadcast TV… Anyway the program was all about a (lady) palaeontologist, who had started looking at fossils of T-Rex under a microscope. She eventually discovered the remnants of T-Rex DNA and is in the process of trying to sequence it. If she can sequence it, then the possibility of cloning a new generation of T-Rex’s is here. She looked where nobody else had thought to look. As consequence, she could see life, where only fragments of mineralised bones exist. She talked about the fact that most palaeontologists are interested in the form of fossils, i.e. their size and structure, and not in the biology, where she wanted to understand what made the T-Rex tick. She also made mention of the fact that most palaeontologists are men. 

It got me thinking about the industry we are in and the parallels between some of the themes that I have started thinking about. It may be a sweeping generalisation, but the “Digital” industry is male dominated. It is an industry obsessed with size and form. We measure success in terms of downloads, uploads, speed, channels, etc. We generally take a macro-view, rather than examining the detail.  This is a generalisation of course or a mere hyperbole for demonstration purposes.

If we were the lady palaeontologist what would we be interested in? Where does the real value lie? What forms the biology of the Internet? I think it is the content and more importantly, the source behind the content. The content of the “Web” is life blood. The thing that gives the structure meaning and life. Rather than thinking about the structure, form and channels, we need to start with the content and use this to build out. Returning to a previous point that I’ve made previously, we need to stop building architectures first and filling these with content. We need to start with the content first…

So how do we start with content first? You dig deeper and try to understand your audiences. Who are your audiences, what makes them tick? That’s the question to ask and to be honest, it’s not a dominant male trait to dig deeper, nor a brand’s one for that matter. In my experience, brands don’t want to do the leg work to dig deeper, they just want to talk about themselves. The gender metaphors could go on…

Driving force behind the future of ‘TV’

With the launch of Google Chromecast, reports that Twitter will soon resemble TV and a multitude of other features of late talking about the future of TV, it comes to no surprise to me that people are now talking about the disappearance of traditional broadcast TV.

Of course broadcast channels themselves may survive, albeit purely within a digital environment or framework. It may be old news, or new to some that Twitter is working on the ability to reset your twitter feeds to align it to a particular programme i.e. you can sync your twitter feed to the timing of the your desired programme. That shows 1) power of 2^nd screening and also 2) people aren’t going to have to worry about the 2nd screen live TV experience happening in real-time.

This changes the TV landscape in its entirety; from content, advertising and media consumption – the three key pillars that form the foundation of TV broadcasting. Conventional wisdom in the advertising industry has been that as the rise of Digital would mean the death of TV; Digital killed a TV star.

Interestingly enough it turns out the complete opposite is true: Digital increases TV usage and media consumption as was recently cited in a WIRED article. Going back a few years, I had suspected that, that might be the case based on nothing more than watching my kids and analysing my own viewing habits. I was fond of saying in JWT where I worked, that Digital did not mean less TV, it meant more.

Another example of new ways to consume digital media, is the Ultraviolet cloud based TV storage system from Sony whereby you upload your DVD or recorded shows onto the cloud based platform and can stream onto any tablet or device anywhere and at any time. You can access content regardless of the device and location. This blurs the line between physical and digital. Ultimately, it gives the consumer more choice and greater options.

Ultimately it re-enforces the point that video is now the primary driving force of content and content marketing. I do not know how much video content is uploaded to the Internet and consumed at any-moment in time, but I am guessing it’s rather a lot. As digital professional, we all have to sit and think about this and its impact on the business we’re in. Video production, design, site architecture, all of this now needs to evolve together to align itself as “content journeys”.

We see this change as a massive opportunity for us – we are learning how to include and utilise video content within the information architecture and design process; so that it forms a seamless part of the customer journey, enhancing, rather than disrupting experiences. We are learning about production values, and story-telling and making it part of the experience. The lines between “Experience” companies like us and the “Traditional Ad” companies are blurring. Our focus on structure and process, lends itself to what needs to be done.

Consumer behaviour is continuously changing and is enabled as the power of technology advances. The future of broadcast is here; the consumer now has control of what they watch and they are grabbing that control.

One last question arises… How on earth do we buy media in this new world?! Thankfully it’s not the business I’m in, so I can let someone else worry about that!