by Pat Kitano on December 24, 2009
Everybody has noticed how fewer Christmas cards arrive in the mail? and for the obvious reasons:
- eCards have captured 5-7% of traditional paper and ink trade. eCard makers are sophisticated in their approach to maintaining customer bases by providing galleries for the Christmas cards being sent out by their clients. Example: Ashland University Christmas Cards 2002-2009.
- Many PDF their own Christmas Card and send by email. The Christmas card photograph can be done instantly now, so people can procrastinate to the point of capitulating with “I’ll PDF and email the card”.
- PDFs retain links so a business can direct traffic to their websites or blog for promotional purposes. This Online Marketing Blog article has some tips to make holiday cards a marketing piece.
- Christmas cards were/are used for recapping the year. With social media, recaps are a lot easier when there’s constant contact and the ability to send a real time holiday greeting through Facebook. Check your Facebook timeline to see what everybody is doing on Christmas Eve…
Merry Christmas everybody!
by Pat Kitano on December 20, 2009
Comcast’s purchase of TV network NBC and movie studio Universal seems backwards to older media veterans who remember the ascent of upstart cable versus the powerful Big 3 TV networks in the 70’s/80’s. It proves that media itself has become a commodity to be digested across a panoply of distribution channels. It just so happens that cable, with its reliable subscription revenue streams and multiple channel assets, now has more financial clout than advertising based network TV and with it, the ability to finance programming through a movie studio as well.
Moreover, TV/cable and Internet are merging towards display across a common TV/monitor display platform. Cable channels pay significant syndication fees to broadcast relevant programming. They are curating content for their audience. However…
Social media facilitates the same content curation done by cable channels. Justin.TV allows anybody to broadcast hit movies (illegally) like a Showtime channel and now, personal broadcasters can get paid for it as a pay-per-view affiliate:
Obviously, copyright issues on Justin.TV seem to fall by the wayside just as they have done on Youtube (Google no longer seems diligent in deleting uploaded copyright content). This tolerance becomes a moral hazard that makes copyright protection unenforceable.
Like other content, video has essentially become free and curatable. For every Hulu, there will be copycat channels. Even Hulu’s exclusive licensed content are easily replicated by screen scraping video software like Camtasia.
Justin.TV’s pay-per-view channels will be the first of a new video revenue model that YouTube (which already announced this intention) and other video channels will follow. Why? Because everybody wants to be a broadcaster.
by Pat Kitano on December 10, 2009
from: http://bit.ly/4Bv7NE
The chronicles of Tiger continue daily with the Mistress countdowns and porn star exposés that are contributing to the collapsing public opinion of a global sports icon. The financial impact hits whole industries – the PGA, Tiger’s sponsors, and the TV networks all relied on Tiger as the drawing card.
This is a case of tipping point media. Mass media will only jump on sensational stories when they’re credible. Once that happens, the social media takes over with the notorious confessionals by otherwise un-famous people. That’s probably one reason why Tiger practiced tight media control… it’s easy to quash one-off rumors when there isn’t a bandwagon of story pursuers. Tiger’s surprise announcement of “transgressions” after the car crash positioned him as fair game for all media.
Tiger is a defining moment in celebrity reputation management. Celebrities will now have to think very carefully about doing questionable things with other people because they have a media mouthpiece – themselves, and a reason to use it for attracting attention.
by Pat Kitano on December 7, 2009
Big media investment into hyperlocal media properties continues with CNN’s partial investment in Outside.in as reported at Paid Content.org. CNN likely plans to leverage Outside.in content to develop local aggregated news for CNN Local editions. My first thought is why does CNN need a content aggregation service when they can do essentially the same thing with local media sources themselves? If it’s for aggregation expediency, what they need is a content management system.
Look at another other big media play into hyperlocal – MSNBC’s August 2009 purchase of Every Block. So far, the most prolific content aggregated by the small Every Block team of 6+ people are police calls. Most are public civic data. The content is impersonal.
BIG MEDIA’S NEED TO SCALE VS. LOCAL MEDIA’S NEED TO ENGAGE COMMUNITY
Big media’s play into hyperlocal only scales if the data aggregation and curation of news sources can be automated from a back office team based in one office building. The weakness in this virtual local news strategy is the impersonality of syndicated content. The key to connecting with the community audience is on-the-ground staffing, who will also support the marketing push and civic outreach.
Huffington Post is filling the void for coordinating local journalist outreach by tapping TV producer Willow Bay as Senior Editor for their new LA edition . Examiner.com recruits local writers. Big media will eventually realize they need to create a lot of local networks, and not rely on a backroom tech operation, to become viable local media. The one-size-fits-all model for templating local news may potentially position them as Media McDonalds. Existing local media in every city now have a window of opportunity to fortify their brand in the face of the potential onslaught of big media’s local plays.
by Pat Kitano on December 1, 2009
Friend Dean Guadagni referred me to this 2009 Social Media Marketing Benchmarking Study conducted by Business.com.
Although not really considered a social media tool, webinar training has been lauded as the most useful social media resource for business purposes:
We also asked respondents to describe the MOST useful social media resource they’ve found for business. The value of webinars and podcasts is clearly in the ability to learn new skills and/or research industries, products and services without the time and expense of traveling to conferences or other offline events.
“The most useful social media resource is the webinars. I feel that they offer the most, don’t demand that I travel, spend a lot of money, or even make a huge commitment of time. They are usually well focused on a topic and therefore don’t waste my time with a lot of unrelated topics.”
Webinars are also very convenient for professionals in rapidly changing or evolving industries where ongoing training is essential. For example, an accountant described the value of webinars in this way:
“Webinars from professional sites–Tax law is ever changing so we rely on webinars and other instant media to update us on the latest changes in tax accounting. Social media is critical to our industry.”
by Pat Kitano on December 1, 2009
Clay Shirky explains the impact of social media, societal change and where things are headed. He talks like his books (h/t David Cohn)
by Pat Kitano on November 27, 2009
This Thanksgiving, I broached a topic with my Japanese American cousins about a heritage issue they weren’t too familiar with.
Few Americans know that the Japanese historically has an underclass of untouchables similar to other Asian cultures like India. The “burakumin” are descendants of a feudal outcaste that worked in occupations handling dead bodies – butchers, leather workers – and considered unclean. They are indistinguishable in physical appearance from other Japanese, and live mostly in the western half of Japan. Even in Japan, it’s a hidden culture that makes for embarrassing public conversation, let alone media coverage. My wife who grew up in Tokyo knew very little about their existence.
The Burakumin have always lived a segregated existence because the government keeps family records based on residence that made escaping their heritage difficult. Their plight became publicized with the 1975 disclosure of a hand written book that disclosed the locations of burakumin ghettoes for use by Japanese corporate recruiters. Even this year, Google Earth caused an uproar in Japan by overlaying old maps that highlighted burakumin neighborhoods, which Google eventually doctored. The systemic societal ostracism accounts for estimates that 70% of Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, are burakumin.
Normally reticent Japanese now discuss the burakumin issue in the chat forums. Information suppressed for generations is disclosed (in Japanese) albeit under cloak of anonymity. There are inferences that many burakumin emigrated from Japan to the US in the early 1900’s as a natural cleanser to their tainted background. The old Hollywood meme of the Japanese gardener and florists in LA may have been started by burakumin who would tend garden at the castles (although it’s also said that non-burakumin Japanese also followed into the profession).
Burakumin were nameless during the feudal era that ended in the mid-1800s. Many were then given geographical or directional names. Burakumin ghettoes were located near rivers and higher up in less arable land. Yamaguchi means mountain mouth, and Olympic skater Kristi Yamaguchi is said to be burakumin.
The American Burakumin
What makes this interesting to Japanese Americans is the experience of the American Burakumin has almost no documentation. My 87 year old aunt says their status in San Francisco was known and my grandmother discouraged a relationship between a cousin and a known family. But that’s all. I think the socially liberal Japanese Americans didn’t give it a second thought.
Then I met a 70-year-old Japanese American woman last year who described in great detail two segregated cultures of Japanese Americans while growing up in Los Angeles. Brings up searing questions… why isn’t this documented? How did they co-exist when Japanese were shipped out to those WW2 internment camps? Was this downtrodden culture already too docile to put up a fight against relocation?
If you’re Japanese American, do you know if you’re a descendant of the burakumin? It’s possible that story never got told. Is there family lore that you’re descended from samurai? If so, might it be a whitewash tale? It’s an intriguing heritage issue.
I’ve created a posterous blog to try to document this at http://burakumin.posterous.com. Please tell your story. My wife tells me it could make Japanese uncomfortable.
