Last week several brands made the news because of their recent advertising efforts. Two found themselves backpedaling away from controversy while one embraced past mistakes to claim a fresh start. But this wasn’t just about creative choices – those are always subjective – it was about having (or not having) an understanding of culture, not just your core customer.

Hyundai had to pull a spot in which a man tries to commit suicide by inhaling the exhaust fumes from his car, only to be thwarted because his Hyundai has 100% water emission instead of deadly carbon monoxide. In a perfect vacuum, one could see the cleverness of the idea, but ads don’t exist in a vacuum and the tide started rolling against Hyundai when a blogger wrote an open-letter to the car manufacturer and their ad agency explaining her feelings about the ad. Her father had successfully taken his own life in that way. Just a few days later, a study from the CDC was released showing that the suicide rates among middle-aged Americans has risen sharply. The New York Times in fact called out that data shows “[M]ore people now die of suicide than in car accidents.” Adding another macabre element to an ad that shows a man trying to take his own life with the aid of his vehicle. I’m not providing a link to the ad in question because it has been taken down.

Mountain Dew also had to deal with a controversial ad last week. A spot directed by Tyler the Creator, the front man of rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. Now, Odd Future is not everyone’s cup of tea, and Tyler’s twitter account is not for the faint of heart (very NSFW). They are however quite popular with Mtn. Dew’s target consumer so getting Tyler and Co. to put together a spot makes sense. Again, I’m not linking to the spot because it has been taken down, but it involves a police lineup featuring four African-American males (all played by members of Odd Future) and a talking goat. So, yes, it’s absurdism, but it’s also an all African-American police lineup, which probably isn’t going to go over to well with some people. The ad also features an bruised and battered white female, who is being asked to identify the perpetrator of her injuries. It’s in fact the goat, who verbally threatens her to the point where she refuses to make an identification. Again, yes, absurd, but a setup in which a white woman has been badly beaten but is too scared to speak up and she looks at a group of African-Americans (and yes, the goat) is a bad idea. Really bad.

Both cases seem to me to be ones in which the brand was a little too insulated from culture. They seemed to lack a certain awareness of bigger issues that are shaping the public discourse, and when you put something out in public, it’s no longer “just for our fans,” it’s quickly available for everyone to see.

JC Penney, the newest client of Y&R New York, had a different problem. After trying several new business ideas they realized that their customers were not buying into the “new JC Penney.” Their response was a video I can show you. Nearly 1 million views in less than a week plus a lot of earned media and massive amounts of chatter in social media channels. Was all of it positive? No, but this spot wasn’t meant to be a solution, just a start. It was a brand saying, “Hey we tried something, it didn’t work, and we value your opinion as our customers.”

I didn’t graduate from Wharton business school, but I’d wager you could probably make an argument for the changes JC Penney tried to implement over the last 16 months or so. But that ultimately wasn’t the point. JC Penney shoppers have a certain mindset and set of behaviors and whether or not those are rational or irrational is besides the point. Nobody wants to be told, “no, you’re wrong for thinking the way you do.”  So rather than just quietly make the switch, JCP stood up and owned their ‘mistakes’ and addressed their critics and fans in an honest and straightforward manner. When you put out a video that does that, you’re far more likely to get the benefit of the doubt.

It’s not always possible to see every possible interpretation of an ad when you are making it, but putting it through a lens that goes beyond the creative and approaches it from a cultural perspective can have a lot of value.

I like Syfy. I’m rooting for Syfy. But as a guy who has spent a lot of time in the Social Media space, I worry about these ads I see during Upfronts Week here in New York.

Syfy is suggesting that their audience is both highly engaged and influential. I’m sure they’ve got data that backs that up too, but these ads display either Syfy’s misunderstanding of social, or are willfully misrepresenting how social works. These ads may some pretty strong claims: Let’s take the images from left to right.

• 12,000 people heard me rave about your hotel
• I told 9,000 people what cell phone to buy
• 10,000 people re-tweeted my movie review

A few questions here. First, are these people credible/relevant voices in the areas of hotels/consumer electronics/movie criticism? Would I value her hotel review any more than I would value her thoughts on political unrest in the Middle East or the best nail polish color for beach season? In other words, what is their relevance as an expert in these scenarios? Second, what is their reach? How many people follow the guy on the right so that he can generate 10,000 retweets? Here’s the tweet for the last movie review from Roger Ebert, certainly the most famous movie critic in this country.

JE here: Roger Ebert's final review, of Terence Malick's TO THE WONDER : http://t.co/la9fj5P2Dk http://t.co/7mkLWyfMYo

April 7, 2013 5:13 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@ebertchicago

Roger Ebert

It got 1,300+ retweets. Ebert had about 844,000 followers, so to generate 10,000 retweets our Syfy-watching friend would have to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-10 million followers. For context, Bill Gates has about 11+ million followers. So yeah, I guess it’s possible for him to get 10,000 retweets, but they are presenting this guy as just a regular Joe, not some combination of Bill Gates and Roger Ebert. Check out this interesting Quora thread for a look inside social media numbers. Now let’s move to the gentleman in the middle. He just told 9,000 people which cell phone to buy, and presumably if you were, say Samsung or Nokia, and you advertised on Syfy, that could be a good thing. But did his comments resonate with those 9,000 people? How many went to the cell phone brand’s website, or added the phone to their consideration set? How many of those 9,000 were even in the market for a new cell phone? Or as Rob Clark, Director, Insights and Measurement at Edelman Digital, notes:

The person who influences me regarding what to eat for dinner is different than the one who influences my purchase of computer #SMMeasure

May 2, 2013 12:22 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@theelusivefish

Rob Clark

I get what Syfy is doing – they are selling their audience as a desirable target demo. They are selling them on the posters as a brand’secret weapon, “I’m your social media,” they tell the brand. I’ve made my share of ‘Top Influencers” lists, and I think they tend to be link bait for those creating the lists and an exercise in vanity for those on the lists. But things like relevance, reach and resonance are important. That’s why Traackr exists.

Here’s where I think Syfy is missing the boat: How are they creating an engagement strategy that ties the brands to the network’s programming in a relevant way? It doesn’t feel like they are connecting the dots. As an advertiser, I could reach the three above in a wide variety of ways, how is Syfy making my brand fit with the content that Syfy distributes? The logic they seem to be banking on is: Run an ad on our network, and our audience will tweet about you. But does it work that way? These people are fans of Syfy programming, not advertising from Syfy sponsors. If I’m watching Defiance on Syfy, I’m tweeting about the show – characters, plots, etc. – not about the latest spot from a hotel chain. That’s why context is so important.

If Syfy wants to sell Syfy viewers as a lever for advertisers, they have to make their advertisers contextually relevant to other audience memebers. Here’s where someone like Hyperactivate comes in. These guys are masters at building engagement around contextually relevant content. Entrepreneur magazine tabbed them as one of three startups to watch coming out of SxSW 2013. They’ve worked with brands like M&Ms, Ellen, Katy Perry, MLB and many more. They recently ran a social media-driven engagement campaign for a popular video game, and in some cases big engagement was driven by people who wouldn’t normally be called “influencers.” Hyperactivate explains:

“One user engaged through Facebook, where he only has 490 friends. From his single entry, he activated 25 people. From those 25 people, his reach grew to 6,077 with a total of over 200 clicks, and further people activated. Normally, this person wouldn’t be seen as any sort of influencer yet he’s activated a good amount of people and spread the brand message to an even larger audience.”

And now we get to the Duncan Watts v. Malcolm Gladwell argument regarding what an influencer is, and that’s not my main point. My point is, regardless of how you define influencer, or if you even believe in that at all, Syfy is playing a bit fast and loose with the true mechanics of social media and they are potentially missing the larger point around providing contextually relevant content. If Syfy wants brands to play ball with them, they need to make sure they are integrating the brands around the content that the Syfy audience has come to enjoy.

According to the Wall Street Journal (as reported by Adweek), Nielsen will be rolling out Nielsen Digital Program Ratings  “which will measure audiences for TV content viewed online. A+E, ABC, AOL, CBS, The CW, Discovery Communications, FOX, NBC and Univision have all signed on to participate in this test, which will begin in May and run through July.” And, according to Eric Solomon, senior vice president for Global Digital Audience Measurement at Nielsen, the company plans to cover mobile devices in future releases.

Adweek notes: “Nielsen Digital Program Ratings will track views primarily on the networks’ own desktop websites, with additional coverage for mobile devices planned for the future. The Digital Program Ratings will provide overnight data such as the number of unique viewers, stream counts and reach by age and gender.”

Nielsen may have been slow to adjust to the shifts in consumer behavior brought about by DVRs, Social Networks, mobile and online viewing, but they are now catching up. They’ve rolled out Online Campaign Ratings ”for brands that want to more effectively measure digital campaigns;” in February they started to measure broadband viewership; and they’ve introduced a Twitter Ratings System via their acquisition of SocialGuide.

I think it’s entirely possible that the television* industry is going to experience a new reality not unlike that which the music industry experienced when it started to update its measurement methods. First, Soundscan brought a level of accuracy to the industry that was woefully missing.  Now take a look at what Billboard charts track now: On-Demand Songs, Digital Songs, Steaming Songs and Ringtones just to name a few. That’s how Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” becomes the Number 1 song in the country without major label distribution.

How will this ability to more accurately track viewership, across multiple platforms, affect content? If I were a programmer I’d be looking to create snack-size programming. I’d experiment with 15 and maybe even 10 minute shows. A really innovative programmer might take a page from the independent comics I loved as a kid: A 40-page main story and then an 8-page teaser for a new character that was being developed.

Think about that for a second. What if you extended a 30-minute sitcom to 35-40 minutes, then aired a 10-15 minute ‘mini-show.’ Let that mini-show develop over four or five weeks, see what kind of viewership it’s gaining on mobile devices and then roll it out in the fall as a full-fledged show. That has to be better than the current strategy most networks use.

I think you could also see ‘mobile first’ content that may be supplemental content to a main show. If you’ve got 10 minutes to kill, would you watch a little vignette that features your favorite secondary character from a hit show as the star of their own 10-minute piece? Of course you would! And networks could probably get interesting directors and guest stars for these mini-shows as well. Once they see the audience is there, they’ll be able to sell brands on sponsoring this content via product integration or hosting it as part of a 2nd Screen play.

Brad Barket/Getty Images for Hulu

There are probably a dozen more possible innovations in format that we’ll see as measurement becomes more precise and covers more platforms, but the net result could be an explosion in original content customized for various screens and featuring new angles on your favorite shows. That’s a future I can get behind. For more on what’s happening on the digital programming front, read this piece on Hulu’s plans from The New York Times.

*Television is becoming an increasingly inappropriate term to use. But “video content” connotes a certain sterility which I don’t much care for. What term should we use to refer to all the types of shows, from all the different distributors, on all the different platforms? Perhaps it is all ‘programming?’

If this is the future, you’d better have a plan that includes something more than 30-second spots.

The 30-second commercial is not dead, despite what Trevor Beattie thinks. But, here’s something to consider, I could easily consume 4+ hours of content, anytime and just about anywhere, night after night, and not see one 30-second spot. Game of Thrones on Demand via HBO or HBO Go, followed by two episodes of binge watching some old series on Netflix, then I’ll play an hour of Call of Duty on the Xbox 360, followed by catching an out of market West Coast Major League Baseball game online.  That’s not trying to get by on scraps, that’s all top tier entertainment.

Read the Netflix Long Term View  and you’ll get a glimpse into how that company sees the future. It’s a fascinating piece, and shows how they, along with HBO and others, are likely to be capturing the lion’s share of attention, certainly from the upscale market. So, if you are a brand like Land Rover or Virgin Atlantic or Waldorf or Revlon or Dell or Crystal Cruises what do you do? We’re not talking about simple DVR commercial skipping, we’re talking about a future where some of the best, most watched and talked about content simply doesn’t have ads at all.

Last week I went to the Machinima Digital Upfront. If you don’t know Machinima that’s ok, unless you are trying to reach the global, male 18-34 demo, then it is a problem. Machinima racks up more than 2 billion views per month across it’s network (internationally, online and mobile devices). They do this with original programming that is tailor made for its audience. At the event they announced new partnerships that will get them into the massive EDM (electronic dance music) market, as well as a partnership with the director Ridley Scott.

On another front there is a discussion over who is going to own the App Battle that is going to be taking place on your phone, tablet, Smart TV / Internet TV / Connected TV and video game console. You can argue who the winner is going to be – Alan Wolk of KIT Digital thinks it will be the MVPDs who have the advantage. I think brands have agreat opportunity, but the truth is, arguing whether we’ll be using a Comcast app or a Google app or a Nike app isn’t the point, the point is we’ll be launching video content from all sorts of providers and producers and that won’t feature a traditional 30-second spot.

So, what’s your post 30-second spot plan? Product integration directly into the content? In-app sponsorship? Create your own app that enhances the viewing experience around content relevant to your brand? Create your own content? Create your own content channel that hosts video from a wide range of producers that aligns with your brand?

Those all sound like pretty compelling options, but “option” may be a misnomer. I think your “TV strategy” needs to be a lot more diverse than simply deciding between broadcast and/or cable. It’s going to involve a sophisticated plan based on your audience and their viewing behaviors. It will require new social analytics like the ones developed by Bluefins Labs, which was recently bought by Twitter. And it’s going to demand a partner who can help you manage a complex web of partnerships and collaborations with content producers, distributors and tech vendors you may not have even heard of five years ago… because they didn’t exist.

Yes, for the foreseeable future the 30-second spot still has a place front and center in your plans. But right now the smartest brands are preparing for a future where YouTube, HBO and Netflix are the equivalent of ABC, CBS and NBC 40 years ago.

Science Fiction, by its very nature, has always been about exploring new possibilities.  The very best of the genre has given us glimpses into a realized future, paving a way for innovation.  The Syfy channel may just be doing that now with their new show, Defiance, but not necessarily in the way you think. While the show may be borrowing from a variety of past creations, the producers are trying something rather groundbreaking with the production – creating a transmedia IP that is living as both a television program and video game concurrently.

It’s a gamble, but it’s one with a certain logic behind it a Content Lab reports: “It’s also an attempt to cater to a highly engaged, billion-dollar audience: participants of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games.”

Syfy is pouring a lot of money, a reported $60-70 million on the game alone, to make Defiance a hit. For HBO, the costs of an ambitious show like Game of Thrones can be covered by subscriptions, but Syfy needs to generate revenue in other ways, and no doubt had that in mind with the creation of Defiance. Again, from Content Lab: “Moreover, the transmedia [Ed. note - actually, I'd call it intermedia] approach also raises intriguing possibilities for in-game advertising. It’s not too difficult to see how a product used in the show, such a vehicle or branded clothing, could appear naturally as elements in the game.”

No doubt this is new territory and Syfy along with game partner Trion have got a lot riding on the success of Defiance. While initial reviews of the show and game were tepid, Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat reports: “In fact, the premiere of Defiance outperformed Game of Thrones on its own premiere day. Syfy hasn’t had a show this hot since Eureka, and its second-screen tablet app posted its best day ever with the debut. The digital stats in terms of uniques, page views, and visits are stellar.

Meanwhile, the massively multiplayer online game has scored 6 million hours of playtime since the launch two weeks ago. I’ve poured around 10 hours into it myself. This transmedia — or a story that is told in more than one medium — has to be considered a success in terms of its ability to grab attention even though it appeared on the same day as the Boston bombings.”

I honestly don’t know if Defiance is going to be a success, it’s impossible to know for certain after two weeks, but I do feel confident in saying that brands should be working to understand what’s at play here. Consumers’ attitudes and expectations towards entertainment and content have changed. The idea of watching unique content on multiple platforms, sometimes even simultaneously, is becoming more accepted, if not expected. This provides massive new opportunities for brands to integrate across multiple touchpoints, creating longer engagements with fans through programming they want to watch. Categories like food, travel and technology could all look to take advantage of this in new and compelling ways.

I’m currently taking two online courses via Coursera. One seems to have generated a lot of traction – Dan Ariely’s A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior has registered more than 135,000 students. In fact, Coursera has, in less than a year, enrolled more than 3 million ‘students’ in more than 10 million courses, proving than MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) have the potential to be a truly disruptive technology for the education system. Coincidentally, the other course I’m taking is entitled, Surviving Disruptive Technologies and that’s what I want to focus on this week.

Over the last year we’ve seen the rise of the 3D printer. Bre Pettis, the founder of MakerBot, the leading consumer 3D printer maker, gave a keynote address at SxSW this year. 3D printing has raised discussions around such diverse subjects as guns,food and clothes, but it’s perhaps a more conventional use of 3D printing that has led one beloved brand to get in front of what it sees as a potential future. According toSociable, LEGO will be unveiling their own 3D printer by the end of the year. In an article titled, Is Lego about to embrace the Dark Side by releasing an official 3D printer? (complete with image of LEGO Star Wars figure), the Danish company ”says that along with the printer they will also release a selection of their 2013 range of Lego sets as downloadable files.  All official sets produced from 2014 will be available for download from the Lego Web Store. Once downloaded, the plans will let users print all the required bricks for their new sets.”

Ok, it was an April’s Fools Day joke by the gang at Sociable. Full disclosure: I fell for it. Tweeted a link to the story and started writing this essay under the assumption it was legit. Seems a bit silly, but if you’re taking that Disruptive Technologies class, it doesn’t seem so far fetched. In the class we are focusing on three brands – Kodak, Blockbuster and Borders who all got crushed by Disruptive Technologies. Now, I’d argue they all got crushed by the same disruptive technology, the Internet, just different applications of it. But let’s go back and think about LEGO for a minute. If in 3-5 years thousands of people have 3D printers in their house and can easily produce LEGO blocks at home maybe taking a ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy isn’t a bad idea. Didn’t we all look at Kodak, Blockbuster and Borders and ask why they didn’t create Instagram, Netflix and Amazon respectively before those latter companies put the former out of business? And don’t we all think that universities all around the country are trying to figure out what they are going to do about Coursera?

Now the question is: What disruptive technology is your client (or brand) facing? Are you in denial about what it will do to your industry, market or brand? Do you have a plan to own it before it owns you?