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June 10, 2003
The Marketer's Upside of Tivo
If your are a marketing weenie, you must have a lot of pride and gumption about the fact that it was you and your ilk whose economics drove a fair bit of the Internet bubble. Advertising, media buying. That was the ticket. There are certainly some of you, especially in Hollywood who are confident that the world's media need to stay in its present form and damn to hell all that digital stuff. If that's your position, you are probably among those who hate Tivo.
Tivo allows guys like me who believe most Hollywood product stinks, as well as most Madison Avenue product, to fast forward through commercials automatically. Such a device could be considered digital payback. So naturally those in Advertising are hiring their slickest attorneys to recast the nature of reality for some patient judges.
But there is another argument. That is that if consumers fast forward through commercials, it is because the commercials actually do stink. Therefore the solution is not to outlaw DVRs but to make better commercials. It must seem very difficult to imagine such a thing as a good commercial, but in fact there are such creatures. This one is likely to cause a scene for some time to come.
Although I like that argument, it does ratchet up the ante for the cost of commercials. One could envision a world where only the most powerful corporations can afford to advertise on television as market research shows only high concept, big dollar ads reach target audiences.
Marketing. Consumption. Can't we just have another kind of economy?
Posted by mbowen at June 10, 2003 07:01 AM
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