The multi-way conversation enabled by social media changed all that. The whole media system is about to completely fracture. PR, advertising, etc., it's all going to change. No longer is your company shielded from the conversations that happen. So what should your brand do? There are four simple rules to profitably leverage social media:
- Be true to your brand
- Be honest with your consumers
- Leverage the assets
- Start small
Fox, or any major media outlet, for that matter, has transformed itself over the years due to sensationalistic practices. Sensationalism sells. Who cares if the facts are only lightly checked. If it bleeds, it leads. But from a more altruistic standpoint, Fox is merely providing its consumers with information about what's going on in the world from its viewpoint. Weather dictates so much in our daily lives, from how we dress, to how we travel, to how we interact with the outside world. It is a daily checkpoint, and it's essential content for news services.
Adding social networking components to weather may not change the daily ritual much initially, but as weather systems continue to cause destruction, there is this innate voyeuristic primal force that makes you unable to look away -- the same rubber-necking phenomenon that had people glued to their TVs watching Katrina devastation.
News organizations are cutting back staff left and right. They need to start leveraging the social infrastructure of those unpaid fleshpods out there armed with digital cameras and video. And in reality, pictures or footage gathered by the local populace is pretty unbeatable. Individuals do it for ego, and that is a powerful motivation. This is a classic 1:9:990 rule. Only one in a thousand will actually provide footage, nine in a thousand will provide commentary on that footage, and the rest of the 990 will be rubber-necking voyeurs. So, if you only need those five, maybe there are enough weather junkies out there to fuel a social media weather site after all.
Holy crap, it may work
So, how did Fox do? It is being true to its brand as a news service. The commentary it provides may not be entirely honest, but pictures and video from consumers don't lie. Fox is essentially leveraging both its assets, and the assets of the social brain cloud of the fleshpod army, which saves the company a boatload of green. This provides Fox with incredible economies of scale, efficiency of news weather gathering, and exclusive content assets it can leverage for its other properties. And the site is a very simple concept that can be scaled to other assets Fox may have if it works. The general news could leverage the same infrastructure as can its bevy of other media properties, including movies and TV shows, and so on. By doing it just for weather now, they do not bet the ranch on the concept and can tweak it before scaling to the media empire. If it ever remotely works, the ROI will be through the roof due to the retention and frequency improvement from exclusive content and the media Fox can leverage throughout its empire. I mean, they do own MySpace, so they know a little about social media.
In a way, I'm surprised that it's Fox that launched it. I mean, for a company that regularly denies global warming even exists, let alone admits that humans could be potentially accelerating it, doesn't it work in their favor to believe the opposite here? I mean, global warming is going to wreak havoc on the weather systems of this planet, making for more devastating hurricanes, more violent tornados, and more sensational weather. Perfect for this concept. At what point do we transition from referring to these events as "acts of God," and start referring to them as "acts of man?"
It will probably come from the insurance companies first, not wanting to pay for "act of God" claims. Ahhh... capitalism. Hey Fox, want to come over to the other side of the global warming debate? You'll make lots of money!
Sean X Cummings is a marketing specialist.