4 bottom lines of the Internet economy: participation, engagement, attention, content = ads

This, below just became clear to me this morning, on the 6.50 am flight from Basel to London (airplane trips always make good occasions for lofty thoughts I guess):

• People nowadays seem more keen to participate than to just consume - quite a stunning reversal if compared to mass media traditions. The culture of participation is spreading very quickly. See: flickr, youtube, blogs, twitter,

  Image by gleonhard via Flickr

  wikipedia, amazon ratings, digg...
• People are much more likely to check out, and maybe even like, a brand (or their advertising) when they are being engaged rather than marketed-to (i.e. yelled-at). See: Nike+, Bacardi & Groove Armada, Dell Idea Storm, Comcast on Twitter etc
• Attention is becoming more scarce by the minute (maybe even more so than time), and as a result attention-data -what do I where, how, with whom, when - is becoming more valuable as well. 'Paying with attention' will become a real option once a) content becomes available on the basis of attention-revenue sharing,  b) new forms of advertising (yes, call it 2.0;) that can exploit this data are becoming more mainstream. Watch this video from my talk at Google UK, to find out more.
• Content will become completely mashed up with Advertising. Since, as Cory Doctorow said back in 2006 (!), Conversation is King - not just Content, we will see more and more innovative advertising based on sponsorship and product placement concepts injected into conversations around content - after all, this is what social networks are all about!

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Comments

[Dominique Hind]

Very interesting post. I am a big believer in brands participating and ensuring they are engaging with consumers.

I think the Dell journey to participation and engagement is a very intersting journey. It didn't happen overnight and there were a lot of false starts, but they are finally there. They nuture their involvement and have continued their commitment to being involved. It is a great journey and shows that brands must be focused on their end goal, no matter how long term the goal is.

I have been tracking Dell's journey and have written a post about it, see URL below:

http://dominiquehind.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/dell-ideastorm-the-snapshot/

Would be interested in your thoughts.

[Gerd Leonhard]

Dominique,yes, Dell makes a great case study - thanks for reminding me. Check out my slideshows on similar topics at www.slideshare.net/gleonhard.

[twitter.com/jabric]

Hello.

I totally agree with that. The old time of "I speak, you listen" is gone since a while.

We tried to figure out what this new form of thinking would be, when applied to the music industry.
Here is the result, for a small french music band called "Charly et sa drôle de dame" :
- CONCEPT : Create an interactive "Where is Wally?" advergame on Youtube ("Wally" is called "Charly" in France, and Charly is also the singer's name and actualy he's also hard to be found... as he is absolutely unknown!)
- ENGAGEMENT : not a classical music clip : you are not passive but an actor of it as you need to look for Charly and clic on him to get to the next stage. Hence an appropriation of the "game".
- CONTENT : more than content, we give experience. What we sell (the music) is only part of something bigger (a game). And the content itself (the music) is free to listen again at the end of the game if you want so.
- PARTICIPATION : bit soon now to do it, but when Charly get more famous we will organize some "remix" competition where people will be encouraged to appropriated themselves part of the lyrics/song and then sharing it with the whole community.

If you want to see the result, it's here : http://bit.ly/1IBsz8 (only starting the promotion step so only a few thousands views right now).

I would be delighted to know your opinion about that!
Jérémie.

[Suzanne Lainson]

I've been telling people in music that it's now all about participation. The idea that on one side there are artists, and on the other side, there are fans, doesn't reflect where the fans are headed. The fans (or, to borrow a phrase, "the people formerly known as the audience") are interjecting themselves into the music whenever possible. So if artists think fans are going to passively consume what the artists create, they may be operating under some outdated assumptions.

Here's a something I wrote this week that explains the concept in more detail.

http://brandsplusmusic.blogspot.com/2009/11/involving-fans-at-many-levels.html

[Gerd Leonhard]

Very nice Jeremy ! Thanks for the comment Suzanne. Cheers Gerd www.payingwithattention.com