Attention Economy
Monday, October 5, 2009 by Anonymous
This week’s lecture was about Digital capitalism and the ways which marketing is affected by the rise of social media. We observed new possibilities of new media’s contribution to traditional marketing campaigns and the dramatic change of the power dynamics between the producer and the consumer. There are now companies that specialize in online viral marketing, which they argue would bring down costs and increase revenue for producers. This however is more easily said than done, Microsoft launched a social marketing campaign in 2009 in the ambition to put together users of Windows 7 to organize their own Windows 7 launch parties. This stodgy campaign resulted as a failure. The construction of this campaign was firmly catered to the aesthetics and semiotics of viral marketing, but it did achieve success, resulting in numerous spoofs made for comedic relief. This failure was mainly due to its obvious corporate ties, and it seemed like Microsoft was trying to buy off consumer. It is a very raw attempt of corporate colonialization in the field of new media.
These are other successful “colonializations” in viral marketing of products such as the iphone advertisement, which was an original DIY, fan-made video clip developed of interest as an user-generated advertisement. It was later bought by apple as the blue prints for the official iphone advertisement. Another example of success in viral marketing through social media is the ilovebees.com phenomenon. Initially posts were made on technical forums and jars of honey was sent to alternate reality gamers, both leading to the what seems like a hacked site which sells honey. This event involved tens and thousands of people and gained millions of views. The players were through a series of tasks and finally it was revealed that the whole thing was a hoax, which players should already realize by then due to it’s science fiction themes of AI and alien involvement. It was ultimately revealed as a viral marketing campaign for the publicity of first shooter action game, Halo 2.
Failures in the raw attempts of corporations trying to profit from marketing to this large audience of online social media brings mere comedic episodes and mocking spoofs, it makes online equality advocates proud of the rise of consumer grassroots movements, and against the corporatization of the online space. Kim Bartel Sheehan and Deborah K. Morrison in their 2009 article “Beyond convergence” mentions that there are still gatekeepers in the online space, and these people’s words are more influential than others. Here the gatekeepers are still the corporations, their less pure involvement fuel the viral marketing campaigns and harnesses the consumers’ attention and creativity, standardizing it and selling it back to the consumer. Making producers the overall winner in this attention economy.
These are other successful “colonializations” in viral marketing of products such as the iphone advertisement, which was an original DIY, fan-made video clip developed of interest as an user-generated advertisement. It was later bought by apple as the blue prints for the official iphone advertisement. Another example of success in viral marketing through social media is the ilovebees.com phenomenon. Initially posts were made on technical forums and jars of honey was sent to alternate reality gamers, both leading to the what seems like a hacked site which sells honey. This event involved tens and thousands of people and gained millions of views. The players were through a series of tasks and finally it was revealed that the whole thing was a hoax, which players should already realize by then due to it’s science fiction themes of AI and alien involvement. It was ultimately revealed as a viral marketing campaign for the publicity of first shooter action game, Halo 2.
Failures in the raw attempts of corporations trying to profit from marketing to this large audience of online social media brings mere comedic episodes and mocking spoofs, it makes online equality advocates proud of the rise of consumer grassroots movements, and against the corporatization of the online space. Kim Bartel Sheehan and Deborah K. Morrison in their 2009 article “Beyond convergence” mentions that there are still gatekeepers in the online space, and these people’s words are more influential than others. Here the gatekeepers are still the corporations, their less pure involvement fuel the viral marketing campaigns and harnesses the consumers’ attention and creativity, standardizing it and selling it back to the consumer. Making producers the overall winner in this attention economy.