PVR Pressure or Do Brands Need to Create Content Anymore?

My mate Nancy is involved with an ecard start up called someecards:

for when you care enough to hit send.

They have a panoply of wonderfully offensive electronic missive material for your delectation.

I chose this one because it references an interesting media behaviour that I keep noticing.

There's too much media. Too much content constantly crying out for attention. So we develop tools to manage the flow, allowing us to timeshift and placesshift how we consume content. But there are only so many hours in the day. 

Content keeps building up, in the PVR, the RSS reader, the inboxes, the media streams.

And if you leave the stream for a couple days, there's this huge backlog of content that needs to be cleared.

I've got to go home tonight - I've got loads of stuff on Sky Plus I need to get through.

PVR pressure. Email overload. RSS distress. 

I just delete everything in my inbox / feedreader.

Too much of a good thing and it becomes a chore. The signal to noise ratio gets confused, because, when there is too much signal, it becomes noise.

Which leads me to wonder. About brands and that.

Brands have grown up using content to communicate.

But do we really need more content? Or are we tense enough as it is?

Perhaps there are other things brands could do, rather than adding to the ever-expanding infinity, to be entertaining or useful. To earn some attention.

Someone has to help alleviate all this tension.

Could the future of brands be in collation, curation, aggregation, dissemination, navigation, catalysation (insert other words that end in -ation of your choice here) - rather than traditional creation?

[UPDATE: Mr. Sorrell doesn't agree.]

Comments

[Ramzi Yakob]

Hi Faz!

Erm no - there can't be too much content. The problem isn't the amount of content which creates the noise, but a lack of filtering to help tune that noise into a glorious signal of high quality, personally tailored entertainment.

Before good search engines (read Google), the internet was pretty useless and we relied on directories such as Yahoo!

I think its just a matter of time before a similar type filtering system is put in place that is as good at its job as Google is at filtering web content.

Amazon has done so well off the basis that it recommends stuff it thinks you'll like based on your previous browse/buy history - and even though its still pretty shoddy there are many people out there trying master this recommendation system. When a good model is discovered, it will no doubt be possible to apply the same methods to broadcast/on-demand content as well.

Have a look at Netflix Prize: http://www.netflixprize.com/ - This is an AWESOME idea - using the same kind of idea as the X prize - but instead of trying to save the world by making plausible, affordable and energy efficient motor vehicles - it is trying to get a better recommendation system for its users.

-tobeconfirmed-

[Faris]

Hello dude!

O good I hoped this might be a little contentious.

Now then - let's see - I absolutely agree with you that a combination of social collaborative filtering and recommendation algorithms will be only way to navigate an infinite body of content.

So, somewhere between I like, the facebook feed, Amazon and Google they will find a way to work out what I like - The netflix thing is indeed awesome.

So - the System - let's call it Last.Media or Last.Behaviour - becomes so sophisticated it can accurately predict what I like.

So there's more of that stuff. The more things I seem interested in, the more stuff gets created.

Like this kind of

http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/2016.html

Anyway, at some point, won't I simply run out of time - more media than I consume ever, that I probably like a bit, has already been created. So then you need a metafilter, to work out which stuff you like the best, so you can focus on only the top stuff you might like.

Does that get all long tail niche? Probably. The more selective the filter, the more specific.

I like: Animation>Cartoons>Satirical cartoons>Things like Simpsons>Simpsons Only

But - at some point, if there's a market for it, more if it will be made, and then the problem starts all over.

I guess - assuming you care if you see everything, which perhaps no one does.

Although - long running series rewards deeper involvement - the more you watch the more you get out.

So perhaps you'd just have a relationship with a couple of highly immersive content strands.

Still - what room in that content world for content from brands?

[Ramzi Yakob]

I see what you mean - but I think that people generally choose favourites amongst any content they consume and then repeatedly go back to those sources. Any superfluous content which exists outside of my knowledge doesn't produce any internal tension in the same way that rats crawling no further away from me than 10 meters at any given time within central london doesn't produce any apprehension as even though I know of their existence, they to me have no tangible existence until I personally experience their presence.

A good example of this would be me. I consider myself to be an uber advanced interweb user - but for my entertainment/information purposes I still only revisit a handful of publisher sites which sit in my favourites bar. I don't actively seek new content unless my regular providers leave me wanting on a particular occasion (perhaps a slow news day). On the days I do go looking, if I find something good which I'll continue to enjoy on an on-going basis. Rather than feeling apprehension about it displacing another content provider, I simply choose a favourite between my new source of content, and previous sources which had previously filled my time.

Brand content will certainly have a tough time getting my attention for more than a few minutes at a time. However we can see from things such as the Netflix prize, that maybe branded activity is more the way to go than brand content.

If Kodak made a funny film (content) and seeded it in appropriate places, sure some people would watch it. If Kodak sponsored a photography competition (activity) which resulted in something cool like an on and offline exhibition of the best work, accrediting the contributors - then a lot more people would spend a lot more time engaging.

Hmmn perhaps you're right. Maybe brand content is on its death bed. Bring on the (12 month) era of transmedia brand experiences (ARG's anyone?).

Or maybe not. Maybe your expectations are too high. Many brands might be happy with getting 100,000 people spending 2 minutes playing a dinky little flash based games. Remember some people need to jump out of a plane to have a good time whilst others can feel just as happy about their life by giggling at the weird behaviour of the squirrels in their back garden ;-)

[Faris]

True.

Activity is good. Perhaps there room for lots of different kinds of brand stuff - which is good as it gives us all something to think about.

I fear I may be getting tired of ARGs ;)

I guess the overload only happens, in some ways, because the recommendation thing introduces into more stuff than you can handle. So it's only by oversubscribing to content that tension happens.

Here are some squirrels ;)

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2007/02/16/photographing-squirrels-photographing/

[Ramzi Yakob]

wOOp sqerrelz!

I feel your pain with ARG's - but to be honest you shouldn't give up hope on them. The only problem with them at the moment is they've been devalued by brands and such like fuxx0ring them up and trying to jump on a bandwagon, but only managing to get 1 foot onto it whilst the rest of them drags in the mud.

For some ARG inspriation - read this: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_args

It was after reading that that I decided ARG's rule. You know its a successful ARG if only a handful of people make it to the end. This is in direct conflict with what most brands want (reach) and end up making things TOO accessible to too many people. By making the game-play prohibitively difficult for the masses, it makes the few who have the ability and the drive to complete them fall in love with your brand forever (and probable speak positively about it to their friends and what not).

"More Snickers, more Coke"

-tobeconfirmed-

[Faris]

Word!

O yes indeed - it works for the few. The committed. Year Zero is legendary.

But they have fans built in.

I wonder if anyone will commit to the same involvement for the Olympics / McDs

http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp?fr_story=41add0893f4ae87d13293e10e1f9c15501babc98

"Yes I'm buying the products, no I don't understand the connection" ;-)

Legendary, dude.

[simon billing]

I dunno. Before all this digitized content there were always 100 novels to be read, movies to be seen, galleries to visit, cities to roam, plays to see, poems to learn, newspapers to scour. Ever was it thus.

[Faris]

True Simon - Jorge Luis Borges described the infinite Library of Babel - but I guess the difference is that now you subscribe to the content, which is then regularly pumped into your life, which builds up, making you feel the urgency of getting through it.

As Ramzi pointed out - if you can ignore it, there's no tension.

[Kev]

Have you heard the concept of declaring "email bankruptcy?" (http://tinyurl.com/2n42b8) - maybe the future will be full of people declaring bankruptcy on all forms of media.

I know the feeling of PVR panic - I've just come back from a week away to find myself with only 12% of empty space on the Sky+ box, and have thought it necessary to stay in one night this week and catch up. And if I don't, the only problem will be missing new episodes of The Daily Show or reruns of The West Wing, but it's hard to escape that feeling of panic.

I also find the overload of media raises your quality standards - I gave up on Shameless and Scrubs as the quality dropped, but if I was still in the "sticking to the schedules" world I probably would have stayed with them. It's only when they were being measured up against what else was around at the time (2 episodes of Scrubs is the same % as one episode of Mad Men!) that your quality bar gets higher. And I'd rather have a box full of re-runs of The Wire than any "new" shows that don't live up to my self-imposed merit levels.

Great blog BTW