Notes and Quotes MEST 3 Case Study

Notes and Quotes

Media Magazine

MM39

Variously known as the symbol for pound (as in weight) or denoting a numeral, the humble hashtag has proved to be a very versatile little fellow.

Television has never been more fragmented. There are more channels than ever before, and there’s more ways than ever to access them.

These days, we’re not just time-shifting, we’re platform shifting. Missed Misfits? Don’t fret. Watch on it 4OD. Buy yourself a series pass on iTunes and plonk your iPad on your lap. Or watch it on your phone as the bus rumbles through the rush-hour traffic and you make your way to college.

With the audience scattering across so many platforms, TV’s cultural function as provider of shared experiences is put ever more at risk.

TV loves a good watercooler moment. As a media student, you’ll be familiar with the concept of uses and gratifications. You know that audiences crave social interaction, and that TV is a supreme provider of it. Alan Sugar leaving the entrails of another hapless would-be Apprentice dripping all over the boardroom carpet. Another jaw dropping (for the right reasons or the wrong ones) X Factor auditionee. The latest improbable plot-twist on Waterloo Road.

Twitter – and other social networks like Facebook – give you a chance to gather round and, via the exchange of banter and barbs with friends, fulfil that particular gratification.

Of course ultimately TV executives are just happy if we’re watching at all – as long as we’re doing it through legitimate channels rather than streaming Glee seconds after it’s aired in America, or downloading the torrent of the latest HBO extravaganza in the gap before it makes the crossing to Sky Atlantic.

Like virtually all media industries, TV has been caught up in what has been described as a perfect storm that has seen advertising revenues plummet.

From one direction, a recession that has seen consumers tighten their belts, consequently leaving many companies with reduced marketing budgets.

From another direction, changing viewing habits. With so many viewing options available, how do you predict with accuracy that you can deliver to advertisers the same number of hungry eyes that you did in the past?

Then there’s the Google factor. If you’re an advertiser why chance that your message will get through when you could take it straight to Google and reach people as they are already reaching – through the power of search – for you?

From now on, you need never watch anything alone. If you want company, you’re only ever a hashtag away.

The rush to pronounce, often in hyperbolic, borderline hysterical terms, is one of the side-effects of empowering the audience with the means to provide such instant feedback.

Cultivating an audience that is interactive means building a sense of community and fostering the brand loyalty that all media institutions crave. If you interact with a show, then you invest far more emotionally than if you are just lolling on the sofa.

Initially rather ad hoc and impromptu, many shows are now actively encouraging their audience to congregate around their hashtag. Have I Got News For You helpfully abbreviates to #HIGNFY, leaving you as many of your 140 characters as possible in which to prove you can by just as sharp-witted as Paul Merton, Ian Hislop and co.

MM45 – Reading Broadchurch

The killer of Danny Latimer was being kept under wraps: only 29 people – cast and crew and some executives – knew the identity of the murderer before the final programme. No wonder thousands of people took to Twitter and other online forums to speculate, prompting a massive surge of interest in the show.

At the end of the episode, Twitter and Facebook fans were offered the chance to see an exclusive scene and, ultimately, we were promised another series next year.

MM47

Like Educating Essex, Educating Yorkshire has attempted to exploit social media and other technologies in order to engage with its audience, but, rather than simply go for a simple ‘North vs South: here’s-the-difference-comparison’, the more recent series has sought to be rather more thoughtful and reflective.

Since the 1950s, the youth market has grown significantly: it is now worth approximately $200 billion a year in the US alone.

Spending on online marketing overtook that for TV marketing in the UK back in 2009. The recent flotation of Twitter generated billions, despite the fact that the company has yet to make a profit: yet you can be sure it won’t be long before it (along with other apparently ‘free’ services like Instagram and Snapchat) is being used to generate marketing revenue.

Marketers are also very active on Facebook and other social networking sites, not just with their own branded profiles, but also in circulating applications, competitions and other messages about what’s currently ‘cool’.

For marketers, social networking is the modern version of word of mouth: it’s a very effective way to embed marketing messages into the dynamics of young people’s friendship groups.

Youth marketing strategies are participatory: they aim to get us involved in a dialogue, to enable us to create and distribute our own messages, to feel as though we are the ones in charge.

This is also the case with viral marketing, where messages are distributed from person to person, often using mobile technology. Cadbury’s ‘gorilla’ campaign from 2007 was a very successful example of viral marketing: while the ads were occasionally on TV, they were mainly viewed on YouTube and similar platforms, on the basis of personal recommendation.

The next step on from this is user- generated marketing, where consumers actually create the advertising messages.

According to Doritos, this is all about ‘sharing talent and creativity’; but of course it ensures that consumers (both the ad-makers and those who vote for them, in an X-Factor-style competition) will ‘buy in’ to their product.

Finally, co-creation is a fairly new approach, in which consumers are invited (and paid) to work with market researchers to develop new product ideas. They attend focus group workshops in which new ideas are brainstormed and developed – ideas which the researchers then take back (and sell) to the companies.

In different ways, these techniques all display aspects of my three ‘Ps’: they are pervasive, personalised and participatory. According to marketers, they are all about empowering young consumers.

On the other hand, we could argue that these kinds of techniques are much more subtle and manipulative – and much less visible and obvious – than traditional advertising. They are harder to identify, and perhaps harder to resist. They illustrate how commercial marketing has become much more deeply embedded in our private lives and our personal relationships.

Megaupload.com was a huge file-hosting site which was ostensibly a means for internet users to store and share files, much like YouTube or Dropbox. In reality it was a notorious host of copyrighted media, which appeared in almost any search on video stream aggregators such as Primewire.

MM53 - Catfished

In an age dominated by social media and online relationships, Catfish: The TV Show seems an obvious spin-off.

Broadcast in the UK on MTV and Five*, it premiered on MTV on November 12, 2012, and is currently in its fourth season. (Target Audiences)

The show has been hugely successful, particularly with the young 15-to-34 media-savvy audience which defines MTV’s core demographic.

It also offers an interesting, if sometimes disturbing, examination of the perils of engaging in online relationships.

Shot with a small Canon Powershot S110 in a ‘Gonzo verite’ style (Cheap / Easy to make)

The audience become privy to the intimate details of some online relationships. Together with the conflict and ultimately the ‘confession’ at the end of the show when the Catfish is revealed and the deceit is clearly evident, this serves only to further pleasure the audience.

The show raises some interesting debates about identity and representation, often skilfully exploring these in terms of class, gender and sexuality.

This show exposes the desperate, lonely, individual seeking solace in adopting the persona of someone who doesn’t really exist in order to validate their own existence.

There has for some time been growing concern about the dangers of using the internet and social media sites.

Both the Catfish documentary and TV show have heightened this sense of fear and moral panic by exposing the potential reality for users – that the online world is not what it seems.

It reinforces the ugly truth that the internet allows people to deceive each other.

Whilst the narrative of the text unfolds, the audience are all too aware that the online love is not what he/she professes to be – particularly when the relationship has spanned some time with no physical meet-up or use of Skype.

It also reinforces a disturbing message: the anonymity of social media provides us with a sophisticated toolkit to create a whole new persona: a world in which we can change our age, gender, marital status, job – in essence, our whole life. And if this wasn’t disturbing enough – it highlights the fact that the internet is plagued with people willing and able to utilise this toolkit and that others are desperate enough to fall for it.