Eric Leist » old media

Diving down the 3D Rabbit Hole

Eric Leist — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:48:23 +0000

This week, I saw my first 3D movie. For a while, I’ve been curious about how the whole 3D media experience is going mainstream. At the consumer electronics show in January, 3D TV was all the rage. In the past two years, 3D has been coming to movie theaters.

Up until this week when I saw “Alice in Wonderland,” my 3D experience was limited to 10-minute theme park shows like the “Muppets 3D” in Disney’s MGM/Disney Studios park and “Honey I Shrunk the Audience” in Epcot Center.

Needless to say, the 3D in theaters today is far superior to the 90s technology in the Florida theme parks. The question has been burning in my mind: Will 3D become the norm for visual media?

When color television first arrived on the market, many people didn’t want to pay for the new color TVs and rationalized that they didn’t need to be shown what colors a baseball field was. Eventually, however, the price for color technology declined, and color television became the norm. Movies like the “Wizard of Oz” hinged on the color aspect. Think about how much more powerful and enjoyable that movie is in color versus what it would have been in only black and white.

I think we’ll see the same predictors for the future of 3D:

Affordability – Right now it is much more expensive to watch a movie in 3D. Like all technology, however, those prices will decline.

Dependability – By this term, I mean how much media content depends on the 3D feature. What will be the “Wizard of Oz” of 3D? Will directors and producers figure out how to make movies and television shows use 3D in a way that transcends the “cheap 3D tricks” we see today? Movies and TV need to depends on the 3D features

Development of a norm - There’s a catch-22 here. The first two points depend on 3D becoming widely accepted not just as a fad, but as a norm. Consequently, the norming of 3D depends on affordability and dependability.

Where will we see 3D develop into a necessary feature? Horror movies and thrillers? Sports? Fantasy?
Perhaps we’ll just have to take the plunge down the 3D rabbit hole to see what happens next.

Planting the Seeds of Media Reforestation

Eric Leist — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:09:48 +0000

So Edelman Inc.’s Steve Rubel wants to know if printed media has become more or less important with the “rise of its digital counterpart.” From what I can see, printed media is not only becoming less “important,” (and I’ll get to what definition of important I’m using for this judgment) but the digital counterpart to which Rubel refers is taking over.
I frequently hear of newspaper companies going bankrupt. In late March, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer made national headlines when it announced it would no longer sell a printed paper. It’s pretty clear the Seattle PI is just the first of many print media outlets that will fall victim to the digital age. In fact, as I’m writing this blog entry, there is a rally going on a few miles away in downtown Boston to save the Boston Globe, which the New York Times Co. threatens to close unless the Globe can cut $20 million from its budget.
Why is the digital media slaying printed media? I find consumers prefer receiving news from Internet or digital sources for two main reasons: they’re faster and they’re more versatile.
Digital Media is Faster
Boston University Professor Dr. Don Wright tells students how he learned about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. He says by monitoring Twitter feeds, he was able to learn all about the developing story before CNN even mentioned the headline-worthy issue twelve minutes later. Printed media, by nature, cannot keep up with the breaking news real-time delivery digital media provides.
Newspapers printed every morning mostly deliver “what happened yesterday,” but the speed with which new media can be updated helps tell online audiences “what’s happening now.”
Digital Media is More Versatile
A second reason why media in digital forms is more popular is because it is more convenient. RSS feeds and mobile devices like the BlackBerry and the iPhone give consumers the ability to read whatever wherever. Instead of carrying a heavy book for subway reading, I constantly see more and more Kindles.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the whole sharing and engaging in conversation thing. Every single news article, blog post and video online is equipped with Share This widgets. The Internet’s hypertext ability led author David Meerman Scott to declare that a blog post about him brought him more business than a New York Times write-up because the blog post linked to his website. Digital media is versatile, and people are growing used to the convenience.

Although citizen journalism tends to be quicker and more convenient, traditional media outlets will still play a role in the news: they serve as a fact check. Citizen journalism is great, I think. Let it run wild. But its flaw lies in the fact that citizens are not trained journalists. Their word should be taken no more seriously than advice from strangers on the street. When we need accuracy, or a reputable source of information, we will not be turning to blogs or microblogging “experts.” Not yet.
Before the Internet, printed media was the only media. Now, it is competing with its digital counterpart. Important (as defined by the Dictionary.com application on my iPod, not by a conventional dictionary) means “of considerable influence or authority.” Printed media is losing some of its influence with the deluge of digital content. Is it still a source of authority? Sure. But that authority is necessary as a result of digital media dominance.
The takeaway for PR professionals and marketers is to adapt–the same way printed media is in the process of doing–to the new digital nature of media. They need to harness blogs and online communities. They need to use the digital tools to target audiences and deliver their messages.

TV Advertisements: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Eric Leist — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:19:30 +0000

My first public relations class at BU causes me to look at all advertisements and communication methods through a critical lense. I am constantly analyzing marketing schemes and advertisements, asking “What’s the message?” “How is it delivered?” “Is it communicated successfully?”

Here are my thoughts on some television ads I’ve seen recently – one good, one bad, and one just plain ugly.

The Good:

A simple and humorous juxtaposition makes this ad one of the best on television. The message: “Heineken beer is as exciting as a walk in closet.” The ad delivers the message in the one swift cut to the men. But what pushes this advertisement to a higher achievement reached by most beer commercials is the product resonance. The signature Heineken green shines in stark contrast to the white lights. This is not one of those “funny beer commercials.” It’s a funny Heineken commercial. Great branding, great message, great delivery.

The Bad:

My roommate pointed the error in this commercial out to me a few weeks ago.
He said, “I don’t know about you, but I kind of want software that requires a higher level of thinking than a 4-and-a-half-year-old can manage.”
While Microsoft’s decision to market their simplicity is attractive to a lot of people, those people are not digital natives, so they aren’t the future. Microsoft makes a mistake with this ad by placing themselves as the industry leader of the past. Eventually, the demographic of people who want to upload a photo with software that has only simplistic, primitive features will die out and leave behind the younger demographic now with the impression that Microsoft makes only basic software not suitable to their needs.

The Ugly:

Does the song get stuck in your head for weeks? Yes. Does that mean people subconsciously want to buy fish sandwiches? I’m not sure. It didn’t have that effect on me. I can’t really pick out the intended message in this commercial. And to be honest, all I can think about when I watch it is how nasty the last Filet-O-Fish I had was.

Agree? Disagree? Still singing the fish song? Other favorite or not so favorite ads?

Our News Capsule Culture

Eric Leist — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:23:48 +0000

Capsulized content increasingly commands attention as we demand and come to love concise messages.
There it is. This entire blog post in the now popular capsule format, which is taking over our world.
The cause: The power of search engines grants us instant access to what we want. That instant access causes us to raise expectations for what we pay attention to. We no longer have patience for flowery writing dancing around its core message. So the capsulized message is taking on a new popularity. Look at the evolution of the New York Times front page in the past decade.
Notice the increasing number of capsulized teasers at the bottom of each page.

2002

2005

2009
And I don’t know about you, but just about half of the Tweets I get include a link and a one-line phrase or headline attempting to draw clicks to it.

Even Facebook has conformed to the Twitter “quick fact” format.

This capsulizing trend is penetrating deep into our media culture—and with a common theme: Concise and complete, yet teasing catch phrases try to lure our attention to their content. Whether it’s clicking a link to a product homepage, turning to the Business section or dragging news-hungry tweeps to a blog, the Art of Tease is changing quickly. Advertisements or marketing schemes that try to reel in customers by showing them only a preview of their product or service no longer thrive. The new goal is to present the target audience with the main idea of the message simply and clearly. The Marketing Experiments Blog creed states “Clarity trumps persuasion.” It’s happening all over the web.
The majority of advertisements on Google and Facebook consist of one or two sentences and a picture. The most effective of these ads have an attractive picture and some concise writing is a necessity for delivering a simple and interesting message. Consumers, microbloggers and even the average Joe love this “get to the point” method. They eat it up. They won’t tolerate anything less (or should I say “more?”).

So what does this mean for all of us? I can spot two emerging trends.

First, our own writing will improve from this exposure to succinct material. With Twitter as the fastest-growing social media tool at 1382%, microblogging is taking off faster than ever before. Lindsey from Synthesis Communications writes in her blog article “Why Twitter Helps You Write Better”:

Twitter has a 140 word character limit in which you must express yourself as succinctly as possible. Several times I’ve found through my tweets that I’ve gone on too long and had to reword my sentences. This rewording has made my sentences clearer and easy to read.

If we want people to read our content, we have no choice but to write better. So many people are blogging nowadays that great writing will prevail by presenting interesting content in intelligent and direct ways.

This prevalence is the second trend. Blogging and microblogging will hinge on quotable material. Other sources will quote content they find worded in witty ways. Ann Wylie, president of Wylie Communications, presents some tips on writing sound bytes for press releases. The same or similar rules will apply to all content.

The Bottom Line: Anyone who wants attention directed at their content will need to keep up with the rising demand for simple, clear and direct language.