Yesterday at AdTech a panel moderator asked the question, “now that anybody can find whatever they want through search, is creative still relevant?” And a panelist, I think from MTV (I can’t read my notes because my hands were shaking with outrage) replied that sure, for example when people go searching for a band we’ll show them another band they’ve never heard of. She MIGHT have been talking about contextual targeting a la Pandora or iTunes Genius but I don’t think so; I think she was talking about selling product.
Later on I was checking TweetDeck before a session and the guy next to me muttered, “Twitter, what a waste of time.” And it occurred to me how different this conference was than the last few I’ve attended and posted about.
The “old media” here isn’t print; it’s MTV, AOL, Comcast and the other mass produced content that the advertisers who attend will put their marketing messages alongside. I saw some clever solutions for monetizing just about every square inch of the Internet, but the core content providers seem stuck in a 20th century attitude of “we will build it, and they will come”.
Apropos which, equipment failure forced a switch from my beloved TiVo to a generic Direct TV DVR this week and I was amazed at the arrogance of the DTV user interface designers in assuming they could get away with the absolute minimum of features and intuitive usability. Good example: in TiVo there’s a “Season Pass” that lists all the recurring shows you plan to record including what is in the queue. On my new DTV box, I select the show and then it disappears. The “list” function only shows what is already recorded, no positive feedback to reassure me that yes indeed 30 Rock will be taped tonight.
The “new media” is of course the self-broadcasting that the audiences of all these old media companies have learned to do by TiVoing, Boxeeing, YouTubing and mashing it up with applications so you can see and share exactly what you want at any time. And getting back to that moderator’s question about whether creative is still relevant when people can find “whatever they want” by searching… where does he think that “whatever” is coming from?