Valuing New Media Ideas with Old(er) Mediums
I recently attended a few events for , a global, multi-city social media extravaganza. It was great to become part of the conversation, in real time, on topics that are affecting advertising and branding agencies.
Media outlets are rapidly changing. Therefore, clients鈥攁nd, more importantly, their consumers鈥攁re asking questions.
One discussed the purchase of Huffington Post from AOL, and the value we place on new media companies as well as mergers with old(er) media companies. This got me thinking about how we value new media ideas. Let鈥檚 take a look at three examples.
- Julie Powell started a blog, chronicling her attempts to recreate every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. When people caught onto the idea and decided it had value (entertainment that would then translate into profit), it was turned into a familiar medium to be presented to the public鈥攖hrough a book, and then later a movie. But the blog already had fans, so why was this idea translated to a different medium? Are blog readers not valued, or are people still just tied to the old media channels?
- Justin Halpern turned things his dad said into a popular Twitter stream, . But seemingly, Twitter wasn鈥檛 enough. Instead of just having interested people meet him on Twitter, the idea and momentum were translated into a book, and then into a TV series starring William Shatner…yep, Captain Kirk. But Justin鈥檚 Dad was funny on Twitter, so why did it need to be translated into a book and then a TV show?
- is an ongoing collaboration project in which people share postcards containing their secrets. New secrets are posted to the blog each Sunday, curated by Frank Warren. PostSecret currently published its collection of secrets into four volumes available at your favorite retailer under different topic headings. Publishing these secrets in book form removes the interactivity of the site; the public can no longer comment on secrets or share their opinions on a controversial topic. Isn鈥檛 this why people fell in love with the Web anyway?
So what do these examples of translating ideas from a new format demonstrate? Do people value new media? Or are they just using new media “to go viral” and then waiting for publishers and producers to find them?
Perhaps I am just being a bit na茂ve. Maybe if I published a successful blog and was asked to make 鈥淭he Emily McDonough Story鈥� into a film starring Meryl Streep, I鈥檇 think differently. Who knows?