Yesterday, we reported from the European Media Leaders Summit. Here are some more trends identified by the speakers yesterday afternoon and this morning…
One interesting debate featured Angel Gambino, VP of commercial strategy and digital media, MTV UK; Jamie Kantrowitz , SVP of marketing and content, Myspace Europe and UK; and Chris Dobson, VP of international advertising sales at Microsoft.
MySpace’s Kantrowitz talked about the need to bridge the gap between user-generated content on the brand’s service and the companies that want to reach these people. She said it was a case of finding how to insert brands into the service in a way that is not a turnoff for users.
MTV’s Gambino talked about the launch of MTV Flux, where the online community decides what goes on the TV channel. She suggested that this might soon be rolled out to other areas around the world as it has proved very successful in the UK at getting people to interact with the brand. She added that it helps people make ‘connections’ with each other, giving the example of how a band and animator had worked together after making contact on the site.
Microsoft’s Dobson talked about how ads appearing in the virtual world, such as in games, are more accountable than standard outdoor ads. In games, you can manipulate the environment to show a brand on a drink machine in the game such as ‘Pepsi’ – it’s just like the real world. He pointed out that gaming is a single-attention activity where if you concentrate on anything else, you ‘die’ or ‘get shot’ so people pay more attention than to other media activities.
MySpace’s Kantrowitz commented that there is no ‘right way’ to inset your brand on a social network. It’s all about finding something that fits with both the brand and its target market. She mentioned that in the US, there are ‘power users’ who have perhaps a million friends and it could be possible to do sharing deals to market to their user bases. Other brands, such as Wendy’s and Lynx, create fun Myspace profiles that make people have positive impressions of the brand.
Another interesting person was Harry Sloan, who is chairman and CEO of Hollywood studio MGM. Regular Brand Strategy magazine readers will remember that we interviewed him earlier this year (subscribers only) and you can see that interview here.
He talked about how movie studios are really good at the marketing side of the industry and this is the new role that companies like MGM are taking. He suggested that as much as $1tn was being invested by other companies in new distribution systems for content (telecoms; digital cable; digital satellite; digital terrestrial; mobile; internet). Sloan said that the role for brands such as MGM was finding great content from independent production companies and gaining rights to distribute it over these new mediums.
So does this mean that studios will now be marketing houses? Sloan seems to think so. It was an interesting point of view in the current debate about content, brands and distribution.
More conference insights tomorrow…..
