The iMedia Summit conversation with Brand New World's Alan Shulman turns to the topic of creative talent.
The following edited conversation took place at the iMedia Summit at Amelia Island, Florida on May 23. The format was that of the "Tonight Show," with iMedia President Rick Parkhill taking on the role of interviewer. Doug Weaver, president, Upstream Group, Inc., was "on the couch," having been interviewed by Parkhill himself. Weaver introduced the theme for the discussion, which is the idea that interactive is the tail wagging the dog -- "the things we are figuring out in our little interactive world are really going to be the lessons that are going to drive the whole business of media and advertising in the future."
The first third of this series featured discussion with Taddy Hall, chief strategy officer of ARF. Yesterday, Brand New World's Chief Creative Officer Alan Shulman joined the conversation. Here's the final segment with Shulman.
Rick Parkhill: So, you have people coming [into interactive] who have created television and made their career doing that and now want to move to interactive?
Alan Schulman: I think it is more the kids coming out of school who say, you know, television has sort of lost its pop cultural currency. What these kids want to do now -- at least the kids working for me -- is, they want to shoot video games, and they want to create mobisodes, and they want to shoot webisodes. And, they want to merge some of the video asset making with some of the interactive asset making, and put those skill sets together. That is going to develop a different kind of skill set. I’m not sure Lloyd Braun, a TV guy from Hollywood, is going to be responsible for the next generation of broadband content when we have got a whole younger generation of kids coming up who are in the gaming business, who are in other businesses who are actually going to, I think, be the ones …
Parkhill: Well, Alan, if you listen to Lloyd, he still thinks that online is waiting for that Milton Berle moment.
Schulman: Right, well, yeah, I mean, I think that “Milton Berle” is a television sort of acronym, right?
Parkhill: A definitive moment for television, yes. He doesn’t think a definitive moment has happened online, yet.
Schulman: I think he’s wrong. You know, I think …
Parkhill: That’s why you are a guest -- because we agree on stuff.
Schulman: I think there are lots of those moments. If you have seen British Airways' new application that they have got to speak Brit -- those of you in the audience have seen that application -- I saw some astounding figures on how many times that application has been pushed virally, so …
Parkhill: You know, I think there are millions of Milton Berle moments happening every day.
Doug Weaver: There are.
Parkhill: I mean, my mom found her high school classmate. My 78-year-old mother found her classmates online that she hasn’t seen for 60 years. That was her Milton Berle moment. Her telling me to go Google something is a Milton Berle moment for me, actually. We have all had them.
Taddy Hall: Alan, what you are saying is that, creative people always reflect the world that they really live in. And, that this generation of creative people coming up have always lived with online, they have always lived with email, and gaming, and these environments, so their creative disciplines are going to reflect that?
Schulman: That’s right. It’s multi-task, right? I think Yankelovich says that the average 25- to 54-year-old can manage 1.4 platforms of media simultaneously. Which is like, you can IM while you work, or you can talk on your cell phone while you drive (hopefully). They say that 12- to 25-year-olds can manage 4.7 platforms of media simultaneously.
Hall: 4.7 …
Schulman: Which is why parents are all freaked out about how their teenagers can do all this stuff at one time, right?
Weaver: Yeah.
Schulman: So that applies to the skill set, as well.
Weaver: But, I think, just to follow up on a point though, we could easily walk away from that discussion by thinking, “Okay, so the people who are going to usher in this change and creativity in media advertising are all, you know, 18-years-old right now and playing video games.” I think that, you know, the people in their early 30s in our business are reflecting a lot of that sensibility now.
Schulman: That’s right, they are.
Weaver: People who got out of college 10 years ago.
Schulman: That’s right.
Weaver: And, I think those people, to the point you made earlier in the intro, Rick, was that those are the people who are really starting to get into the board rooms now and get sway. They may not be the CMOs, yet, but they are product managers in a lot of these companies, and I think they are the ones who are putting pressure on the traditional advertising establishment to do things differently.
Schulman: I think all you have to do is look at time spent online versus on air, and then you have to figure out how to leverage time spent online in the smartest way, and what creatives are in the daily business of doing is, you know, trying to figure out more creative ways to leverage that time spent. We came from an html publishing grid, where people were all about information first. And, now they are not.
Parkhill: Right.
Schulman: So, you know, when we create rules -- we have got too many banner sizes, and things of that nature -- and, now we are starting to, thankfully, with the IAB’s help, evolve out of some of that and optimize the grid for new types of experiences, and I think that is what is going to move it forward creatively.
Weaver: And, you know, all of this turns the business model upside down. How does content get monotized in the future? We were talking about this last night, Taddy. In a video-on-demand world, do you think that there is going to be more consumer options, that they can either pay to watch that show, or they can opt to watch the commercials?
Schulman: Yeah, I think that is what is coming down the pipe. And, if you want to pay 99 cents to watch an episode, or even a chapter of a DVD, like you can now, I think eventually when telecom gets in the on-demand business, in the broadcast over broadband business, the cable companies are finally going to -- and, rightly so -- get a run for their money.
Parkhill: So, if you have the option to either pay 99 cents and either watch that 30-minute show, or watch the commercials, what happens to the audience now? It becomes less affluent?
Schulman: I don’t know that it becomes less affluent. I think it becomes, you know, in a world of macro-fracturing, I think what Doug said about addressability … we just have to get smarter about how we target.
Parkhill: Macro-fracturing?
Schulman: I swear I just made that up.
Parkhill: Macro-fracturing, I like that. So, you know, we are desperate to reinforce this whole wag the dog concept …
Schulman: Mmm hmmm.
Parkhill: And, from the creative aspect …
Schulman: Uh huh.
Parkhill: Do you think it holds water? Are we learning things online that are going to teach us how good TV is in the future?
Shulman: Yeah. Anybody who is really enlightened about the web not only sees it as a platform to measure just interactive advertising, but also actually a platform -- look at Buzz Metrics, look at Initiative Media’s prophecy, the things that are -- they are measuring buzz about television shows online. I mean, we are actually, you know, we have got a protocol here in IP that can optimize every media depending on how enlightened you are. It is going to take agency culture a long time to come around to that. Client culture is probably ahead of agency culture in terms of driving, wanting to know more, and wanting to know deeper, denser information about behavior. The wag the dog thing, theory, in terms of leveraging the power of IP protocol, is absolutely true creatively as well.
Weaver: Can I dovetail with that a little bit? I think what you just said is IP is the defining infrastructure really for electronic media?
Schulman: That’s right.
Weaver: It is interesting. A few days ago I moderated a panel on emerging platforms, and my friend Jeff Minsky, who is in the audience, was there as well. And, I heard about, you know, there are 13,000 cable systems out there, each with their own interactive TV platform, their own advanced TV platform, all trying, in my mind, to get to the same, to get to where IP is today. So, how do we stop the madness? I mean, can we not find a better way to demonstrate to advertisers that this just may be the best way to deliver rich video, engaging advertising?
Schulman: We have already been through this once. That’s why this industry is as mature as it is now. We are not the stepchildren anymore.