December 13th, 2007

Why “Hit Culture” is dying

I turned on the radio for the first time in a long time this morning … i found their marketing slogans rather curious.

Sydney #1 Hit Music Station” – Hit Music? What happened to the Best music, or the Newest music, or your favorite golden greats music.

If i was running a radio station, i would probably look to have a different slogan than “Today’s Hit Music”

What is Hit Music anyways? Who decides what a “hit” is? I’m pretty sure its not the consumers of the hit music, i’m pretty sure its a bunch of fat old cocaine using, yacht sailing music execs… I’m also damn sure at best its not a democratic process

I think increasingly today and tomorrows consumers like to see themselves as cultural entrepreneurs, people who find cool new songs, artists, video clips, blogs, website etc – and try to be the first to share it with their friends.

Hit Culture is fighting uphill against this trend, Hit culture is trying to tell you than because everyone else is listening to it that its the best for you, Not the other way around.

I mean, sure JT and Brittany get a lot of play, but i think less and less people want to be listening to stuff that everyone else is listening to. New economy consumers crave the niche, the new, the unique. They want to be the first.

Combine the attention economy, the long tail, consumer generated media, bottom up publishing, social aggregation and voting systems and we end up with a situation where consumers don’t need radio stations telling them what is cool to listen to today.

Sites like The Hype Machine consistently prove this. They ongoingly have the coolest music way before even the studios have released this music, and often enough some of the material the The Hype Machine makes great ends up on the radio.

On the other hand, im sure im a little bit wrong … some people just love turning on the TV and watching Today Tonight or E! Entertainment news…

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Call Shifted Today on 02 8005 1568 At Shifted Pixels we go the extra mile to ensure that whatever work we do be it strategy, planning, design, development, online marketing, media buying yields a tangible net benefit. Give us a call, we would love to help your business grow online! See what shifted pixels has to offer

December 3rd, 2007

Is creativity being strangled by the law?

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf

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Call Shifted Today on 02 8005 1568 At Shifted Pixels we go the extra mile to ensure that whatever work we do be it strategy, planning, design, development, online marketing, media buying yields a tangible net benefit. Give us a call, we would love to help your business grow online! See what shifted pixels has to offer

November 2nd, 2007

YouTube Party Costume

The image

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Call Shifted Today on 02 8005 1568 At Shifted Pixels we go the extra mile to ensure that whatever work we do be it strategy, planning, design, development, online marketing, media buying yields a tangible net benefit. Give us a call, we would love to help your business grow online! See what shifted pixels has to offer

October 29th, 2007

Online PR in Australia

While the US has engaged Online PR much more rapidly than many other countries, it is interesting to see some early activity in Online PR in Australia.

As far as we can see the Australian Online PR industry is evolving in several ways

  • Traditional PR agencies are adding digital media to their services ( with little understanding of the depth and technical aspects required by Online PR)
  • Boutique Technology PR agencies sprouting up – who are reasonably solid and do embrace social media or SMO (but don’t cover SEO)
  • Web and SEO agencies rebadging their work as Online PR (without the holistic approach required)

There is much discussion about PR 2.0 amongst US blogs, yet most Aussie blogs seems to dance around the subject.

The reality is, PR has changed. PR is all about influencing the influencers. But as we have seen, the scope of influences have changed. No longer do TV, Newspapers and Radio hold the greatest influence over toady’s consumers. A recent stat we came across mentioned that 65% of all Australian consumer purchases greater than $200AUD were researched online (ABN 2007).

When researching online, bloggers and social recommendation often hold significantly more influence than spun up Press Releases on any of the major news outlets.

So how do we deliver real value Online PR in Australia?

Well, if PR is about influencing the influencers, then Online PR is about influencing Online Influences, weather the influences are search engines results, bloggers, consumer review sites, forums, social media and community networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

So how to you influence online?

  1. Find out who is actually influential. We use BuzzNumbers Online Media Measurement to evaluate just where and who is influencing
  2. Target these Influencers and evaluate who can be contacted (you may require some technical research methods to find out exactly how to contact these people)
  3. Engage in relevant, honest, authentic, spin-free conversations with these Influencers
  4. Be prepared to take negative feedback, and to openly and honestly address the critisism.
  5. Offer influencers something of real value.

At the end of the day, Online PR is different to Traditional PR. Online PR is a 2 way conversation, Traditional PR is a 1 way broadcast.


Shifted Pixels provides Online PR Services and Consulting to Sydney and Australian based businesses, and we also offer white label consulting services to Traditional PR and Marketing agencies who may be looking to get ahead in this rapidly emerging space.

Call us for a quick chat with one of our friendly staff.

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Call Shifted Today on 02 8005 1568 At Shifted Pixels we go the extra mile to ensure that whatever work we do be it strategy, planning, design, development, online marketing, media buying yields a tangible net benefit. Give us a call, we would love to help your business grow online! See what shifted pixels has to offer

October 29th, 2007

Blogs as reliable as mainstream media says Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

Interesting news from the ACCC who say that Consumers consider blogs as reliable and as influential as mainstream media.

Sounds like call to action for online reputation monitoring :P Its also interesting to consider how the ACCC see’s its role in new media. Will they try to control and censor australian bloggers and online review sites.

CONSUMERS who get their news from the internet are likely to trust a blog for reliability as much as a mainstream media site, the competition watchdog said today.

“For a growing base of users, these are all equally valid sources of news, information, entertainment and gossip, and users are not necessarily discriminating between traditional and new sources.”"

“For regulators like the ACCC, it means ensuring regulation relied on during the last century does not become an irrelevant fallback position that fails to serve the public’s best interests,” he said”.

This is very cool but also scary, what has made the internet great is its total freedom. Will that be eroded by Australian governments and what can we do to ensure that bloggers cannot be held legally liable if they critisise an Australian Company online.

Source: Courier Mail

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Call Shifted Today on 02 8005 1568 At Shifted Pixels we go the extra mile to ensure that whatever work we do be it strategy, planning, design, development, online marketing, media buying yields a tangible net benefit. Give us a call, we would love to help your business grow online! See what shifted pixels has to offer