It's All Geek To Me - February 2nd 2005

In case you happen to be sane enough not to be engrossed by this drivel like I am - American Idol is a bit like the good old gong show. Contestants sing a song, the audience votes, the losers lose, and the cycle repeats the following week. At the end the 'prize' is a recording contract - this show is now in its second season.

The thing that really sticks in my head is how the Internet has changed American culture - reality TV is hardly new, but the massive popularity is. The Internet made each consumer a publisher, creating a two way communication. Each time you send an email, publish a web page, post to a newsgroup - you are authoring. This obviously is not possible with most forms of mass communciation - Radio, TV, etc. This 'consumer as publisher' concept is based upon new technology and now that the cultural concept is out of the bag it is impacting things that are not Internet related.

See, American Idol is a for profit (apparently lots of it) venture of Fox Broadcasting - so while it depends upon the consumer as publisher concept to get the audience involved it does not use the technology that spawned this concept.

That's right - you can't vote for your favorite contestant online. The show, of course, has a pretty slick website. It includes contestant profiles, gobs of video clips, chat rooms, a store featuring American Idol Merchandise, and a way to play the 'American Idol Game' - where you guess who will win. So the show has 'voting' technology on the web site, but does not allow people to vote in that way. Being the kind of guy that I am - I assume some sort of lucrative contract between AT&T and the show exists. Your options for voting are to call toll free, usually jammed, or to text message your vote with your cell phone - text messaging rates apply of course.

This concept of everyone as a publisher is spilling over into many things - today it is much easier to organize a protest, promote a cause, or voice your opinion than it used to be. People who don't even use the technology that makes this possible have it in their cultural consciousness that it can be done - and they behave as though it has always been so.

In the early days of the Internet people often spoke about an 'Internet Marketing Plan' as separate from a general 'Marketing Plan'. While it has been clear for some time that a single plan should exist and the web is a component of marketing this cultural spillover raises a really interesting question. How can marketing plans be created that utilize the consumer as publisher cultural concept - even when they don't use the technology itself. American Idol is a good example of a marketing effort that is doing this now.

Please send me your favorite examples of this. As the Internet becomes part of our culture we need to find ways from a sales and marketing perspective to understand the consumer culture and capitalize on it.

American Idol Site