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Viodi View Newsletter – January 11th, 2006
Click here to learn more about Viodi’s Local Content Workshop
By Ken Pyle, [email protected], Managing Editor, Viodi View
- Cause the Face Ain’t Listening
- Direct Relationshops
- Extend That Brand
- Survey Says – Video Production – Not Just for Hollywood
- Essential Digital Video
- Viodi’s Content Pavilion at TelecomNEXT – Local Content & More
- Some Good Shows Coming Up in the Next Few Weeks:
- A New Year’s Gift – VOD Questions and Answers
- The Korner – An Idea for the United States Postal Service
A long break is a good time to catch up on reading. I only planned on reading one book over the holiday, but a surprise Christmas gift provided some interesting, unexpected and timely commentary on the role of customer service in today’s Internet-driven world. The book, Talk to the Hand was penned by the same author, Lynne Truss, who wrote the critically acclaimed book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
Cause the Face Ain’t Listening:
Talk to the Hand does an excellent job of summing up the general decline of manners. Even though she brings the British perspective, humour and vocabulary, her observations and laments about this plague on society are universal. Interestingly, one of her bigger criticisms is of business and its push to get customers to provide “self-care”. In her words,
“It seems to me that most big businesses and customer service systems these days are either modeling themselves on the internet or have learned far too much from a deep reading of Franz Kafka. Either way, they certainly benefit from the fact that our brains have been pre-softened by our exposure to cyber-space. Our spirits are already half-broken.”
She definitely is onto the challenge that all businesses face as they try to use technology to make things more efficient for their operations, while giving their customers a 24×7 customer service experience. The dichotomy is that, as consumers, many of us want the convenience of online transactions when they work flawlessly, but have little forgiveness when the online world morphs into a seemingly infinite time-sink.
The Holy Grail for content providers has been to have a direct link to the consumers of their content. Every day, there are new announcements from content owners regarding their efforts to use technology to forge these direct relationships. Content owners have to stay a step ahead, as content creators are increasingly going to be working with technology to bypass all of the traditional distribution methodologies.
A good example of a content creator, who is essentially bypassing the old-style distribution networks, is Howard Stern. His new channels launched on Monday on Satellite radio. Last Sunday on Larry King’s show, he made an interesting point, when he suggested that technology is the most important thing in media right now. He then went on to hawk Sirius’ S50, an audio equivalent of a DVR, which will learn a user’s preferences and automatically download up to 50 hours of audio. Love him or hate him, he certainly knows his customer base and is using technology extend his brand.
In the fast changing world of technology, trust in a brand is more important than ever. Last month, I had the chance to attend an interesting seminar, hosted by D-Bam, on the importance of brands. This seminar featured Michael Moon, co-author of the book Firebrands: Building Brand Loyalty in the Internet Age. He suggests that companies need an IT strategy that is driven by their marketing objectives in order to build and maintain their brands.
That is, systems, processes and procedures that help build and reinforce the brand will provide the competitive edge in the future. The brand is built with every interaction a prospect or customer has with the company, so these systems must be of high quality. This seminar focused on the idea of creating “smart Marcom factories”, whereby the required to launch a product can be reduced by using asset management technologies.
At first glance, it might not be obvious that independent telcos should be concerned about managing their Marcom assets. But, as independent telcos face an ever more competitive world where they will have to offer more services to more customers, it will become critical to have systems in place to automate and provide consistent experiences, as well as be able to quickly find their digital assets. Add in the production of video to the Marcom mix and the need to quickly find images, presentations, music and clips becomes even more critical.
Survey Says – Video Production – Not Just for Hollywood
Video production among independent telcos is a hot topic, according to the results I have seen thus far on the survey Viodi sent last week. To all of those people who have not yet responded to the survey, this is a reminder that we will keep it open until the end of the week. To all those who have responded, thank you and the results will be returned in a few weeks.
Independent telcos interested in producing their own content should also be interested in The Essential Digital Video Handbook, by Pete May. Even though it was written in 2004, the book feels very current. The author clearly has a pulse on where things are going, as well as where they have been in the video production industry.
His experience behind the camera shines through in the number of useful tips that he peppers throughout the book. There are a generous number of photos that help bring the words to life. This is a good book for learning subtle techniques to give videos a professional look. To read the rest of the review, please click here [Club Viodi Members ONLY].
Viodi’s Content Pavilion at TelecomNEXT – Local Content & More
Local content is the most exciting thing about the revolution caused by Internet Protocol. Low-cost digital tools and inexpensive distribution are allowing people to express themselves and to be seen ways never before possible. Entire new channels are being developed to tap this creativity. These are just some of the topics that will be explored at Viodi’s Content Pavilion at TelecomNEXT.
We are creating a hub of content activity in a common area at TelecomNEXT. I am looking forward to announcing a number of content, tools and technology partners that are going to be making this a very special part of the TelecomNEXT exhibit floor. We are going to have independent telcos involved in a number of unique ways. Please go to www.contentpavilion.com/ to learn more.
Some Good Shows Coming Up in the Next Few Weeks:
- NTCA’s Broadband Summit, Jan 12-13, Las Vegas – always a good show with good speakers and topics
- Zhone’s, “Unraveling the Mystery of Content” webinar, Jan 12(see ad at top of email)- looks good as it has timely topics about Internet Video, etc. and Gene Pao of Disney is speaking
- WCAI Symposium, Jan 17-19, San Jose – Last year’s was a very good show for getting a worldwide view on wireless as an alternative access technology.
- OPASTCO, Jan 21-25, Maui – I am looking forward to learning about Local Content in OPASTCO U
- NATPE, Jan 24-26, Las Vegas – A good show to understand what is going on in the content world.
- NTCA Annual Meeting, Feb 5-8, San Diego – Always a good way to get a pulse on the independent telco industry.
- IPTV 2006 – Driving the Next Wave of Innovation, Feb 16, San Jose – It was jam-packed last year with lots of good topics and speakers.
A New Year’s Gift – VOD Questions and Answers
It has become a bit of a tradition to provide a presentation for Viodi View readers around the holidays. In this issue, we have placed the question and answers from the panel “On Demand Success Stories” online at www.viodi.com/vod. As a bit of fun, “Burma Shave” style advertising has been added to each slide at no extra cost.
While we are on the topic of embedding subtle messages, CD-ROMs have been sent to all of those who correctly identified the last seven words shown in the video interview with Mary Coller. The seven words were, “Peace on Earth, Good Will to All.”
The Korner – An Idea for the United States Postal Service
Should the U.S. Post Office be privatized? This was a question I actually brought up once on a first date a long time ago. And I wonder why I didn’t have many second dates. I still ponder that question on occasion, but at least I know not to bring up this question to my wife. The reason I raise it here is that, as alluded to in the last issue, in many ways the underlying premises for what we need in a postal system may be changing thanks to the Internet and the low cost of transmitting information electronically.
No, I am not raising this issue because of this week’s increase in the cost of postage. This isn’t a knock against anyone in the U.S. Postal Office, as they are delivering more mail with fewer people to more locations than they were last year. I do wonder, however, if an organization that is politically-controlled can adapt to the rapid changes brought about by technology.
I suspect a private post office in a competitive market would be a bit more nimble and flexible knowing that they wouldn’t always be able to raise stamp prices or fall back to the U.S. government for backing.
For instance, why hasn’t the USPS reacted to the rise in energy prices by cutting its delivery schedule from six to, say, four days a week? I suspect that today’s society could adjust to fewer deliveries of the mail and that our fine telecommunications system would pick up the slack. Just a crazy thought……
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