Transcript for MTG #39
Transcript for Managing the Gray #39
“Is New Media Selling Itself Short?”
Originally posted on July 27, 2007
C.C. Chapman: Well, welcome everybody. Welcome to Managing the Gray #39. How’s it going? It’s a beautiful Friday here in Metro West Boston and my mind’s been really going kind of nuts for the last few days. This has been a strange week. It seems like it’s been a strange week for a lot of people out there. Between Twitters and blog posts and just IM conversations, it seems that everybody is having a rather stressful week and I’m right there with you.
Today, I’ve had these ideas floating around and it’s all Clarence’s fault. If you haven’t checked it out, go out to doyouknowclarence.com. Clarence Smith, Jr. is a guy that Eric Rice introduced me to. He said, “Dude, you have got to meet Clarence. You have to. You guys are both from the Boston area and you both will connect. I know you will.” And we did. We connected in over four hours of conversation and stuff and the idea of Do You Know Clarence was launched, but what’s amazing about Clarence is he’s one of these individuals who says it like it is no matter what. I mean all of us, I’m a pretty open and honest guy. I will share my thoughts if you asked for them, but at the same time I usually think about what I’m saying, whereas I might if I really disagree with somebody I’ll really stop and think about it before I say it, not necessarily sugarcoat it, but sometimes I say it differently. Clarence is one of those who just right upfront, boom, what are you doing, and he asks the tough questions and I love that. There’s a Boston Tweetup, [unintelligible]Tweetup. It feels very weird, but it was a Meetup where a bunch of people on Twitter got together at Boston Beer Works and it was great, good conversation, and then we rolled down the street to No Reservations screening.
No Reservations is this new Catherine Zeta-Jones movie and was it Aaron Eckhart? Is that his name? I don’t know. It’s a date movie, total perfect date movie if you’re looking for a date movie this weekend. The whole topic today is about podcasters in new media not selling themselves short and investing value in themselves. The No Reservations screening was a perfect example of this. Kathy Maister does this thing called StartCooking.com. It’s a video podcast and full disclosure, I am involved with it. I help them out. I give them advice and help with the social media and whatnot. What was cool is Warner Bros. saw Kathy and a bunch of other food podcasters who were in a Boston Globe article. Warner Bros. came to Kathy and said, “Wow! We want you involved in the screening.” It’s a cooking movie. They reached out to her. It wasn’t a token reach out. They did a real reach out. They were giving away screening passes on the radio, they mentioned “hosted by StartCooking.com’s Kathy Maister.” I was like, “That’s cool!” I mean in the print ads, in the radio ads. What they did was they didn’t just say, “Hey, you wanna come host this for us?” They embraced it and they treated her with the respect that she deserved. I thought that was great and Kathy did a great job hosting it. It was an okay movie. It’s not my cup of tea honestly. The little girl in it, I guess she’s from Little Miss Sunshine, which I still haven’t seen, but she was adorable and she was so good. It was a nice night and it was nice to see a video podcaster getting some respect.
I’ve been thinking a lot about it and Clarence got me thinking about this stuff, talking about with all the podcasting networks and all the social media friends’ networks and blah, blah, blah, and it got me marinating a lot of things. Seriously, go to doyouknowclarence.com. The stuff he says, it makes you think. He doesn’t just say it for the sake of saying it. He makes you think and I love that.
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that it seems that new media all over the map — it’s funny. People seem to be happy with little things, tokens of appreciation, little sponsorships, and I’m thinking it’s time to start thinking bigger. I don’t think you have to monetize. I’m not talking about that type of thing, but if businesses are out there listening to this, yeah, you can probably get an ad buy on a blog or a podcast for cheaper than you can in a magazine. What I’m starting to say is that people should start realizing that your voice is important. I don’t care if you have 10 or 100 listeners, I don’t care. They’re your listeners. They’re yours. They’re your community and it’s up to you to determine what gets said to them and it’s kind of important that you think about that. Yeah, I’m doing everything stream of consciousness today so I hope I’m making sense. Let me play this comment from Jay Moonah. He sent me in a comment. It kind plays into this. Well, you’ll see. It’s got to do with something Jaffe did recently.
Jay Moonah: C.C. Chapman, it’s Jay Moonah. Hope you’re doing well. I just want to call in to kind of get your take on the Joseph Jaffe Across the Sound iPhone thing, which seems to be a big deal. I’ve seen a lot of stuff on Twitter and in blogs, things like that today. Obviously, we’ve heard Joseph’s comments and not to get [unintelligible] against Joseph, I think he’s a very, very smart guy. He has a very, very good podcast and obviously deserves whatever he can get in terms of sponsorship. I just think the whole thing seems to be getting blown kind of out of proportion. I mean essentially the guy got 600 bucks sponsoring an episode of his podcast and I mean good on him, but I don’t think it’s a big revolution personally. I’d just be curious to hear your take. I mean it’s cool that he got an iPhone and lucky him. We don’t have them in Canada yet, so I am a little envious in that sense, but, yeah, I’d just be curious to hear your take on it. Is this really a revolution in podcasting sponsorship or not? I’m curious to hear what you think. Anyway, hope to see you soon, man, and take care. Bye.
C.C. Chapman: So, for those of you who don’t know what he’s talking about, Joseph Jaffe, who happens to be my boss at Crayon, but he also hosts Across the Sound and on an episode a couple of weeks ago — I don’t think it was a couple of weeks ago now. He said, “Hey, if anybody sends me an iPhone, you can sponsor an episode of Across the Sound,” whatever company sends him an iPhone and he got one within 24 hours, he had them. Actually, I think he got two of them from different companies. Now, I think this is very cool. Don’t get me wrong. I think that’s very, very cool. Now, on a personal note, here’s where it falls down. Joseph’s already got a phone. He’s got a phone and now he’s got an iPhone and he has to pay now to have that iPhone. Doesn’t seem like much of a sponsorship to me. I mean if someone wants to give me an iPhone and pay for the two-year contract on the phone, then I’d be interested. I don’t want to pay for something like that. Oh, I got a cool toy because I don’t know if you know, but you can’t activate the iPhone without activating it via AT&T and I know you can deactivate it, but if someone wants to do that, they could sponsor an episode of Managing the Gray maybe. I don’t know. We’d have to talk, but the point Jay raises is one that I think is true. Is it a big deal? I don’t know. I think it’s a cool idea what Jaffe did. Now, personally, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. It was a company and I cannot — I wish I could remember. I’m forgetting what it is right now. Custom Scoop, maybe? I think that’s what it is. Now, they get a plug on my show. But what I’m talking about is the fact that they got a cheap ad buy, 500 bucks, 600 bucks, whatever it is and they get a whole episode of Across the Sound. I think Across the Sound is worth more than that per episode perhaps. I just think he’s selling himself short and I don’t think it’s anything revolutionary at all. I don’t. I know Jaffe’s going to hear this. He’s going to be pissed at me, not going to be pissed, but it will be a fun conversation.
What would have made it revolutionary? What would have made it revolutionary is if Apple said, “Joseph, here. Here’s an iPhone. We’ll sponsor it.” That would have been revolutionary, but they didn’t. It was another company who happened to be able to buy one. If the actual company had stepped up to the plate and done it, I think that would have been great. I think that would have been revolutionary. I’d be singing it to the high mountains. That makes no sense, but the fact that a company did it doesn’t shock me that much. I think it’s very, very cool, but I think a lot of people would see an opportunity in that if they like the show. I’m sure I could say — I can’t think of a gadget I want right now. I would like a Nokia N95, but do I need it? No, and I don’t want one because it don’t work in my network, my phone network, so I better replace it.
This whole thing got me thinking is that people are selling themselves too short nowadays. I don’t know what it is. If you’re thinking about monetizing your podcast or your blog and that’s up to you because I don’t think you have to, but if you do want to and you do have a committed audience and you take this seriously, you’ve got to figure out what your price is or get an idea about it. I just hate seeing these people. I’ve seen some sponsorships be extremely small, extremely small and it kills me because a big, big company who has plenty of money couldn’t pay money for this. It’s sort of along the lines of I saw Cameron Reilly yesterday from The Podcast Network. He twittered something about, it was something like, “Why does a magazine with glossy pages and a huge circulation think I’ll write an article for free?” It’s the same concept exactly. They have money. Big companies are starting to find out that podcasters will take anything from them because they get excited. Just be careful of that. Just make sure your value is there. I know there’s this new Association for Downloadable Media that’s being formed and there’s another one being formed and I don’t know which one’s right, I don’t know which one’s wrong. You’ll see my name associated with the ADM because they got me involved, but I haven’t been involved because I haven’t been — it’s a long story. I don’t know if it’s the right thing or not. I honestly don’t.
This episode of Managing the Gray seems like it’s going to be pissing off more people, but it’s not that. I’m trying to be open and honest and get the conversation going. I don’t know if the ADM is the right idea. [Unintelligible] it is. Anything that gets big companies together to realize new media is an important thing and start getting some metrics, some ideas, get the ideas in their head to show that this works, I’m all for, I’m all for. Is this organization the right one? I don’t know, but we’ll see what happens. Personally, anybody who steps up and tries to make things move forward in this space I’m cool with as long as they keep the ideas and they protect the little guys because I don’t want any association. I don’t care what it is. I don’t want any association or company to forget that mom or that kid who’s just doing a podcast for the heck of it, but suddenly gets an audience and is doing it strictly just for fun. I want something to be for all of them. If all of a sudden the only focus of podcasting is on making money and on big corporations and big shows, then we’ve lost because all it is, is old media transitioning to a new generation and that sucks and that’s not what I want. I want to make sure everybody has a place at this table. That’s one of the cool things about new media is that the cost of entry is nil. You get a laptop nowadays, you pretty much have everything you need to do a podcast or to do a video podcast or to get involved with a blog. You can do them all with nothing and I don’t ever want the cost of entry to ever be any higher than that. I hope that stays that way and I hope it stays pure and I hope everybody gets along and plays nice together in the playground and all that jazz.
This is going to be a short one because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this. I honestly sat down this morning and said, “Do I want to do this?” because I know getting my thoughts out there might upset some people, but at the same time I had to get them out because it had been bubbling up inside. I look at the landscape of new media. It excites me. I get really jazzed about it and I want companies to start doing it right. I want to see more company podcasts, but I want to see them being done right. I want to see more virtual worlds, Second Life or otherwise, PlayStation Home, Kaneva, any of these things. There are a lot of things going on and I’m looking forward to it. One of the things I’m going to start doing I realized is all my conferences I’m going to, they’re all blogging, they’re all podcasting-related. I want to get outside the fishbowl. I want to talk to people who have no idea who I am or what I’m doing. I want to get out there. I saw one in Vegas the other day that I hadn’t heard about that I want to go to because nobody’s talking about it. I want to go to the small town. I think I want to do like a New Media Camp up in New Hampshire, the Upper Valley where I grew up, where people don’t know about this stuff, but I think it would be great to get people going. I want to get more grandmothers doing podcast. I just want more and we’re not getting there and I want businesses to realize and respect the people in this new media space.
That’s Managing the Gray for today. I’m sure I’m going to get comments, managingthegray.com, or you can call me up in the comment line, 206-309-4729. Thank you for listening to my little — it’s not really a rant, it’s just an honest brain dump I had to get out of my head. That happens to me. Everything just gets filled up and I got to dump it out and I hope you enjoyed it, but I would love, love, love your feedback. Please. You can also email me at managingthegray@gmail.com. I would love to hear you. I’m sure this is going to kick off some interesting conversation and I would love to hear from lots of people involved in this space, especially from anybody. I had someone in the other day say, “I’ve been hesitant on calling you for a long time,” because they were worried about their voice not being heard. Please, all. You too could save a child. That’s what my voice just felt like. So, it’s 206-309-4729. You guys take care. I’ll be back really soon.
