The Media of The Young - according to MTV

The young Dane and executive from MTV “Henrik Werdelin” did a good presentation on how MTV was using the new media and new technologies in innovative ways to engage with their audience.

Already from the beginning, I sensed a connection between this presentation, and a presentation at the conference from the day before, where a journalist told about the design of future media. Actually this journalist by training spoke about something quite different from designing new media, and seen with my marketing eyes his fluffy views could have made him a millionaire, if he had only given what he was speaking about a clear name – if he had branded it. Because after his presentation I sensed from the mood and talk of the other participants at the conference that they’d been fascinated and interested by him – but where’s the money if you can’t put a name to what you buy into?

My point of bringing this other keynote speaker into context with the skilled guy from MTV, is that they spoke about similar stuff – or at least complimented each other.

I am willing go out on a limb and present a new concept, based on the ideas I got from both interviews. What I found that they were both talking about, and what in my eyes clearly came through as a theme across several presentations at the conference that may even turn out to be a future trend, is what I would call Social Process Re-engineering: How social processes may purposely be simplified, re-configured, re-invented by means of new technology and new media. The purpose should then be that important socio-cultural processes can be made less costly (in terms of e.g. money, time, and psychological factors) and even more enriching (in terms of e.g. convenience, greater social interaction, more efficient use of resources). The expression is inspired by Michael Hammer (19xx) article about “Business Process re-engineering” (read obvious “rip-off”), but the concept as I see it, deal with fundamentally different processes: processes in society outside of the corporate sphere.

Thought Henrik Werdelin from MTV didn’t go into these theoretical considerations, he came with a number of straight forward examples of how MTV have born similar thought in mind in their activities. I have chosen to pass on a few of these here.

Campaigns should be pro-social and I was confirmed in my belief that companies should, especially when dealing with the youth, continue to take into account that consumers also take environmental, political and ethical factors into consideration in their decision making process as a consumer. MTV continues to put great emphasis on a wide variety of human rights issues like women’s rights and AIDS.

Other briefer statements I recall, told that
__The line between what’s real and what’s virtual is blurring with the emergence of virtual communities (sms, web and via games)
__Mega-communities like “Friendster” he however didn’t think would succeed, because the young didn’t want to “hang out” with more than 15-20 people at the time. (This can been seen also in the online gaming world, where huge numbers of gamers subdivide themselves into clans or guilds)
__Communication should continuously be localised and customized to the audience
__The focus of MTV’s new media development was especially to create systems and setups that invited people to develop their own content and to interact more with each other. The example he gave was “Happy Slaps”, where young slap someone while catching it on their phone, either as a photo or as video
__The trend that you actually “perform with your phone” is expected to become even greater with time, as what’s going on in South Korea spreads further across the globe. The development in South Korea for the use of mobile phones is estimated to be 3-4 years ahead of Western Europe.
__Technology is that biggest driver of new behaviour
__Kids will be less tech savvy – or at least less interested
____Technology will be downplayed and
____User-centric solutions and interfaces will be upraised
__People of all ages will generally play more
____Play can become exercise
____Gaming is already a profession in South Korea

(This is just a note for myself: Kim, remember visiting iFILM again!)

Moreover, we were very briefly introduced to a number of ideas MTV were playing with, such a
__Viral mMarketing (via mobile phone pranks)
__Participation TV, in the spirit of background.bbc.co.uk
__Adding a bluetooth enabled software program to the phone with a mood-indicator
____You set your mood, and can monitor the mood of whoelse is in the room

In order so succeed with this kind of marketing tactics, you have to be willing to take a risk, because though you may well win some, you will loose some too! Dare it and learn from your mistakes. Though MTV spends millions of dollars on researching their audiences they still take initiatives partly on gut-feeling combined with inspiration from that research.

The presentation by this young executive from MTV was definitely among the best at the conference. First of all it said something new, it touched upon topics that were on the forefront of media evolution, where many of the previous presentations did not do that to the same extent. It also gave insight into a company that appeared to be highly professional, innovative and willing to take risks. MTV seemed to be able to offer its audiences products, services and experiences that though they appeared to be far away from music per se, still managed to support the brand MTV – it even seemed to reinforce it! Henrik Werdelin explained that this was possible because music remained at heart of what they did.