Buying into American Idol

Chapter One: First Half

Concept/Idea: Marketing

Terms:

Corporate Convergence, Convergence Strategy, Transmedia, Networks, Marketing Strategies, Media Consumpstion, Reality Television, Programming, Affective Economics, Purchasing Decisions, Quantify, Measure, Commodify, Return on Investment(ROI), Exploitation, Aggressive Targeting, Brand Reputation, Media Touch Points, Consumption Patterns, Loyals/Fans, Impression, Expression, Next Generation Audience, Investment, Exposure, Emotion, Brand Extension, Lovemarks, Brand Loyalty, Active Consumers, Inspirational Customers, Brand Advocates

Arguments:

"New models of marketing seek to expand consumer's emotional, social, and intellectual investments with the goal of shaping consumption patters."

"Affective Economics...a new configuration of marketing theory...which seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions."

"New marketing discourse seeks to mold those consumer desires to shape purchasing decisions."

"This emerging discourse of affective economics...[allows] advertisers to tap the power of collective intelligence and direct it toward their own ends, but at the same time allowing consumers to form their own kind of collective bargaining structure that they can use to challenge corporate decisions."

"Affective economics sees active audiences as potentially valuable if they can be courted and won over by advertisers."

"Marketers seek to shape brand reputations across media touch points...[in order to] build a long-term relationship with a brand."

"The strength of a connection [with a brand] is measured in terms of its emotional impact. The experience should not be contained within a single media platform, but should extend across as many media as possible."

"Fans are the central players in a courtship dance between consumers and marketers."

Evidence:

"American Idol turned out to be the first killer application of media convergence--the big new thing that demonstrated the power that lies at the intersection between old and new media."

"FOX Broadcasting Company was receiving more than 20 million telephone calls or text messages per episode casting verdicts on the American Idol contestants."

"An AT&T spokesman explained, "Our venture with FOX has done more to educate the public and get people texting than any marketing activity in this country to date."

"FOX devoted 13.5 hours to American Idol during the crucial May sweeps period, representing nearly one quarter of their total primt-time schedule for the month."

"American Idol was sold to FOX through an aggressive campaign by the Creative Artists Agency, which saw the series as an ideal match for their client, Coca-Cola, and its 12-24-year-old target audience."

"Viewers tend to remain with cable once the fall season starts. So, the broadcast networks are countering by offering more original programming in the summer, with the less-expensive reality televisison programs becoming their best weapon."

"American Idol was from the start not simply a television program but a transmedia franchise." (goes on to list first season winner's RCA Records deal, #1 hit single, radio domination, bestseller American Idol book, concert tour, and movie)

"Early evidence suggests that the most valuable consumers are what the industry calls "loyals," or what we call fans."


"Advertisers are increasingly demanding accountability from media outlets for the degress of actual exposure they receive and for the quality of relationship this creates with their consumers."

"There has been a proliferation of media options--a move from three major networks to a cable environment with hundreds of more specialized channels and the intoduction of alternative forms of home entertainment, including the Internet, video, DVD, and computer and video games."

"The average consumer settled into a pattern of watching ten to fifteen different media outlets."

"As advertisers grow anxious about whether network programming can reach audiences, they are diversifying their advertising budgets and looking to extend their brands across multiple distibution outlets that they hope will allow them to target a diverse selection of smaller niche markets."

"'Monolithic blocks of eyeballs are gone. In their place is a perpetually shifting mosaic of audience microsegments that forces marketers to play an endless game of audience hide-ane-seek.'" Forrester Research

"The biggest hurdle we have to go over...is the integration of the networks, the studios the ad agencies, the advertisers, the talent agencies, and anybody else that's involved in this space."
-Lee Gabler, co-chairman and partner of Creative Artists Agency

"This next-generation audience research focuses attention on what consumers do with media content once it has passed across their eyeballs, seeing each subsequent interaciton as valuable because it reinforces their relationship to the series and , potentially, its sponsors."

"Expression charts attentiveness to programming and advertising, time spent with the program, and the degree of viewer loyalty and affinity to the program and its sponsors."

"The logic of brand extension...the idea that successful brands are built by exploiting multiple contacts between the brand and consumer."

"Coca-Cola sees itself less as a soft drink bottler and more as an entertainment company that actively shapes as well as sponsors sporting events, concerts, movies, and television series."

"'Lovemarks' are more powerful than traditional 'brands' because they command the 'love' as well as the 'respect' of consumers."

"We will use a diverse array of entertainment assets to break into people's hearts and minds" -Coca-Cola president Steven J. Heyes


External Links:

<http://www.2.coca-cola.com/heritage/stories/index.html>

Cokemusic.com

Idol Gossip

In Chapter Two of Convergence Culture Jenkins dedicates a section to "How gossip fuels convergence" in his goal of critiquing "How we are being sold on reality television." Most interestingly Jenkins cites the new wave of understanding by the feminist front on the topic of gossip. Gossip has been reanalyzed and "reappraised." Gossip is not just idle talk anymore, but can be understood in a different light of appreciation and value. Jenkins refers to a writing on the topic by Deborah Jones in 1980. Gossip has always been, for women, a natural coping device, a normality-reinforcing part of life. Jenkins concludes that gossip is "A way of talking about yourself through critiquing the actions and values of others." People innately share information and deliberate with each other. The bigger the pond, the bigger the fish. Cyberspace takes the social circles of gossip to their max potential. In Chapter two of Critical Foundations of Rhetoric, we learn that rhetorical imperatives are determined by the socieity and its values: "Social and cultural values and traditions also must be understood as they pertain to a speaking situation." Language is culture, so a "cultural convergence" is a language convergence, we are just analyzing the different forms that language is able to adopt and lead our lives. This blog, my Facebook account, my friends' email and myspace, they are all gossip portals.

producers vs. consumers

The love/hate relationship between producers and consumers that Jenkins describes in Chapter One "Spoiling Survivor" is classic supply and demand with the integral twist of converging media, and the subsequent control, power, and demand of the consumer. Now, consumers are producers. The grasp of people's attention is a major factor in the love/hate relationship. Jenkins says that "fans exploit convergence to create their own points of contact." Producers and consumers on all sides and at every point of perspective seem to be fighting for the lime light; everyone wants the information first, they fight to get it. Then when the subject becomes boring it is mute. Reading "Survivor Spoiling," I kept waiting for the point were Jenkins made aware to the reader that people do merely watch the television show, instead of searching and stalking the facts before they are presented in the intended fashion. But if you think about it, maybe the pure consumer of the television show does not log on to the blog and participate directly with the spoilers; the show can still be ruined for that individual under many circumstances. The news stations and medium want to know who is spoiling what, and they make news out of the spoilers. So, the pure consumer, who is waiting to watch and enjoy the show in time as intended, has the chance of getting spoiled by the domino effect of information when he goes to check his email, or reads the newspaper, watches the morning news, or water-cooler talk about the said information. With converging medium comes an influx of information and ideas attainable and unavoidable to everyone. The information, once surfaced, is splashed everywhere. So, the love/hate relationship comes full circle, or more accurately is a diagram of arrows pointing back and forth from producer to consumer, then from pure consumer to un-original producer, back to producer, and so forth. It is a never-ending cycle that only begins again with the "new thing" that captures popular attention.

Mapping the Maddness

What follows is a personal case study in convergence culture. Starting this course, the first thing that comes to mind is my slow advance into the world web of communication. As I think many people can relate--surely, I am not alone--venturing into the virtual world, giving in to the madness of it all, can be a challenge for some. I did not get a cell phone until it was the better financial decision, I had email only because of school, and I certainly did not chat online. I was never one to naturally navigate the Internet. Part of me wanted to, but never had the aptitude, for different reasons I was very reluctant. Slowly, but surely, things change, the evolution of media evolves so rapidly, and before I knew it I was sucked in, suckered in to getting a Facebook account. Two years ago I took off of school to attend an internship in Colorado Springs, Colorado for a year. Before I left, my sister and best-friend talked me into getting a Facebook account so we could keep in touch, they promised it was the best way and very efficient. I was so concerned about my anonymity that I used a pseudonym, Shaniqua Washington. I was Shaniqua for a year, until my new friends in Colorado could not find me on Facebook, and even more, after a trip to China, my new friends there wanted to stay in contact, and since Facebook is a world wide institution, I changed my name and developed a personal profile to match the real me. Point being, Henry Jenkins is an answer to the prayers of the confused and frustrated individuals who are stuck in this virtual world. Convergence Culture is an attempt at mapping an understanding of the madness that surrounds and sustains us. You can't live with it, and you can't live without it. Work, school, play, purchasing; the Internet contains options that the non-virtual world cannot supply, and vice-versa. Jenkins goal in trying to understand how these worlds, ideas, systems, and people participation on every level collide is just that, a huge collision, everything continually converging and changing. Here today, gone tomorrow. The Internet can help you one minute, and complicate your life the next. Devices that include telephone and Internet may be sufficient for the user, but complicate the real-live relationships going on around them. People are living virtually, i.e. Avatar, Second-life, literally living full, seperate lives on the web somewhere, but what about the real world, the real life? It all gets so mad, and interesting and intriguing at the same time.