Friday

Oh, for the day when
I choose my entertainment

Advertisers pay heed: You will lose many of us

By George Simpson

   Pundits have predicted that one of the end-games of technology will be to take control of what, when, how and where entertainment is consumed away from producers/programmers and give it to users. Apple’s iTunes, subscription digital radio and PVRs like TiVo are signs that the established media paradigm is indeed shifting.
   Just like cable or dish viewers would rather give up their firstborn than go back to three broadcast nets (and a federally mandated PBS), music buyers have now become addicted to choice.
   File-sharing opened the door empowering kids to mix 50 Cent with Nas and Eminem and Green Day on the same CD. And iTunes has simply institutionalized consumer music choice. While “I want it my way” may no longer sell burgers, it is the mantra of the entire next generation of entertainment consumers.
   Eventually PVRs will force networks and cable channels to simple become content providers on a pay-per-download basis. Primetime will be nothing more than a nickname for an aging ex-jock.
   And while I still like sitting in an increasingly expensive, uncomfortable chair in front of a 30-foot high stain-marred screen in a dark room, eating 12 cents worth of popcorn I just paid $5 for, surrounded by strangers who talk in stage whispers, laugh at all the wrong parts, and eat Chinese food they smuggled into the theater, I can somehow envision the convenience of downloading a first-run movie.
   It will certainly be in my lifetime that I control when and what and how and where I consume all forms of entertainment. (Unless, of course, I elect to spend $75 to sit in a freezing rain to listen to drunken New Jersey teenagers proffer thoughtful opinion on referee calls, coaching, and sexual offers ending in “–you” or “–me” to the staff and players of the N. Y. Giants.)
   Let’s see, would I rather pay my current $125 a month for cable and have to forego my son’s little league games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights so that I don’t miss “NYPD Blue” or “West Wing,” or would I rather pay a few bucks to view the shows commercial-free when I get home from the games?
   If the TV industry doesn’t react, PVRs will be under 250 million Xmas trees in the next few years.
   While advertisers have purportedly smelled the coffee and begun to commercialize everything from video games to people’s foreheads with product/logo placements, they are still in the process of pumping billions into the upfront market, rewarding a medium that charges more and delivers less each season. Proving only that is it still more fun (and career enhancing) to go on a commercial shoot in Costa Rica than it is to write snappy pop-up copy.
   All the crap that advertisers are doing now to overcome the fractionalization of audiences is only pissing off consumers and hastening the day when they are cut entirely out of the producer-consumer continuum.
   Seeing a brand logo or prominent product in a TV show (or increasingly in a movie) only interrupts my concentration as I wonder if it was paid placement or the byproduct of a culturally attuned writer (think Junior Mints on "Seinfeld").
    The technology end-game for advertisers can only be to become my information partner. I will make advertisers a deal. If they will stop screwing around with my entertainment, allowing me complete commercial-free control, I will email them when I am starting to renovate my kitchen or buy a new car, because THEN, I can’t find enough information on faucet fixtures or driver-side airbags. At that moment I am a red-hot lead.
   If my newspapers and magazines will customize my content with more statewide high school sports (or less photos of celebrity hairstyles), I will be happy to check boxes of items I am thinking of buying so that ads of real interest surround the content I am SURE to read.
   Does that mean advertisers can no longer prospect for new customers?
   Or nag consumer into changing brands?
   Well, they do so at their own peril. How does your potential customer feel when he finds out the girl he’s hitting on at the bar is only there to sell him a branded drink or that the guy asking your prospect to take his picture with a cell phone in Times Square is really an actor pitching the phone?
   Does seeing Nike on Tiger’s head or some casino logo tattooed on a boxer’s shoulders or listening to some has-been actress yak about her incontinence problems (and solutions) on a talk show turn me on to your brand?
   Or push me faster into the commercial free camp? You make the call.

- George Simpson has spent many decades as a PR man in New York promoting a wide range of media properties. He is an occasional contributor to Media Life.

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