‘Futuretainment’ M. Walsh (2010)

What changes are predicted for the future relationship of producers and consumers of

media and what are the implications of these?(CHAPTERS: 4. Network, 7. Crowd, 22. Engage)

INSIGHT: “The Audience Network holds the power in the digital age. In the traditional broadcast era, beaming out your content through transmission towers was enough to secure audience attention. Now that audiences themselves are organised like a network, your only hope of distribution is ensuring that consumers are motivated enough to do it for you.” - page 63

Network

“An Audience Network describes the relationships that consumers of entertainment products have with content and with each other. ...the links of an Audience Network are not fixed, but are constantly growing, shifting and rewiring themselves.” - page 58

An Audience Network will always adapt to accommodate new people, ideas and ways of going about things on the Web.

Network

“...the concept of an ‘audience’ is already changing, and in the future it is likely that it will be very different.” - page 58

Audiences are beginning to break away into smaller groups - niche markets - making it harder for media companies to attract them.

Network

“Everyone in an Audience Network is connected to everyone else.” - page 58

Audience Networks wouldn’t function as a network if this wasn’t the case.

Network

“Whenever someone consumes a piece of media, their actions connect them with other audience members who they may not know, but with whom they may share a history of similar entertainment choices.” - page 63

This is fundamentally the way in which an Audience Network is created as the media consumed becomes the links between the consumers.

Network

“To create a successful piece of content, you not only need to get people to like it, but must also encourage your audience to spread it through their own channels.” - page 63

By using the Audience Network a media company is able to reach it’s target audience without having to target it directly.

Network

“With the advent of Audience Network it was clear that a new relationship was developing between the creators and consumers of content.” - page 63

This relationship is now a lot closer than it ever was before in the way that media companies are listening to their audience more in order to give them the products they want to see, keeping the company successful and gaining revenue.

Network

INSIGHT: “Consumer behaviour on the Web is a complex adaptive system. A task that might be impossible for any one individual becomes a reality through the linked behaviour of online crowds. But cascading feedback also has a dark side: crowds can just as easily become mobs.” - page 100

Crowd

“Audiences, like most crowds, rarely behave in a predictable way.” - page 94

Members of an audience will influence other members of the audience which will in turn show a media company whether their product has been successful or not. However, this also suggests a sheep-like effect which could mean this isn’t a fair representation of the views of a particular audience when one person takes into account the view of another, and so it continues.

Crowd

“Individually, one audience member might not seem to have a particularly profound influence on the media ecosystem but, taken as a whole, the interdependent interactions of millions of consumers can have a huge impact.” - page 94

It only takes a handful of consumers to start off an interaction that will then snowball in many more people interacting with each other.

Crowd

“The Web is fast becoming the ultimate example of a complex adaptive system....” - page 98

The Web is always changing due to new ideas, new concepts, new ways of doings things, new sites and programs and the next generation of Web users.

Crowd

“Without feedback, collective intelligence can’t function properly.” - page 98

Interactions are required to create a network, otherwise it would all just individual comments and views.

Crowd

“Feedback has become an integral part of how the Web functions and the ways in which consumers interact with each other.” - page 98

It is feedback which creates the interactions between the users as they then start to have discussions.

Crowd

“...Audience Networks are helping to bring structure to the Web through their perpetual interaction with content.” - page 100

Structure is created through the consumption and feedback process which the Audience Network participates in.

Crowd

“However, there is a risk to collective intelligence: a crowd becoming a herd. Sometimes a few individuals can have a disproportionate effect on the behaviour of a group as a whole. When people in an Audience Network pay close attention to the media-consumption behaviour of those around them, suddenly everyone can begin to imitate each other, resulting in an ‘information cascade’.” - page 100

The most dominant and actives members of an Audience Network can become ‘known’ to the extent that people ‘trust’ what they are saying and they influence what others say and think.

Crowd

“As Isaac Newton realised, crowds may be mad, but their power must nevertheless begin with the actions of one person.” - page 100

In order to create an Audience Network, one person has to make the first move in order for someone else to then interact with them.

Crowd

INSIGHT: “The future of advertising does not lie in big, complex online campaigns. The Web is a powerful medium for telling stories. The challenge for marketers will be to manipulate digital platforms to create and sustain their brand mythologies. As consumers become smarter at eluding marketing, it will not be sufficient merely to invent better looking advertisements around content. Advertising will need to become the content.” - page 255

Engage

“As the media has become more fragmented, two things have happened: firstly, it has become harder to get enough people in one place at one time to effectively deliver your...message; secondly, and more importantly, it is even harder to get them to pay attention when you do.” - page 246

Audience have split up into smaller niche markets and people’s attention spans have decreased, giving way to what some people call a 3-minute culture.

Engage

“...the trouble with campaigns is that in an online world people interact with brands in different ways.” - page 247

People now longer just watch an advert on TV or see it in a magazine, they are now interacting with the brands on social network sites. Viral marketing has lead to a much stronger relationship between the producer of the advertisements and the consumer as it is their job to spread the virals for the company.

Engage

“...the Internet...offers brands the opportunity to enter into a much more direct conversation with its customers.” - page 247

This is largely due to social network sites as companies can create their own pages on which their customers and people who like the brand can interact with them and with each other.

Engage

“...brands have to start thinking like media companies.” - page 254

In order for a company’s product to be successful, like a media company, they have to advertise it in a way that their target audience wants to see it advertised and to deliver this advertising in an appropriate way for the target audience.

Engage

“...audiences are now so fragmented that the only way for them to achieve mass awareness is for their message to be compelling enough for consumers to do the distribution for you.” - page 254

This is where viral marketing is really good. With viral marketing, a company will create the content, which would be the advert, and then they upload it to an online platform where their target audience will carry out the distribution by circulating it through e-mail, social networking, word of mouth, etc.

Engage