I admit it. I’m a pop culture junkie. And at times a bandwaggoner. So while I didn’t watch the whole season of American Idol, I did watch the last few shows and of course the finale last night. I was struck by the record-breaking 100 million voters who engaged with the show to make the final decision on the winner. And it brought up a few questions on the power of the show and what can organizations learn from this massive success? So I turned to our NSB expert – Canadian Idol judge and music industry expert – Zack Werner for his insight.
I’m pleased to share his perspective here:
“The American Idol finals once again smashed records for the number of votes cast. Of course, it is a matter of vote early vote often and thus is there is no way to quantify the number of actual individual voters but even with world class speed dialing the maximum number of times an individual phone can get through to vote in the two hour window is around 3000 to 4000 times. The reality of the Idol franchise is that it still remains the sole vehicle that is the fulfillment of the promise of truly interactive television. In fact it may stand alone in the entire world of media for the level that the viewers determine the outcome. Such a simple concept and yet virtually impossible to duplicate. It stands out from the dance shows in that there are no professionals telling the contestants what to wear, what and how to sing. Thus it is the only show that the public votes on the actual choices of the participants.
The question to any business attempting to create this type of groundswell through voting or online participation of any kind is how to monetize the masses involvement. It’s all well and good that 6 million people hit your website or your YouTube video but where is the money? Even YouTube can’t find it. There aren’t enough advertising dollars to even support the platform. Further, if you ask viewers to lay down a dollar for something they truly believe in their heart of hearts should be free they turn and run like the wind. Everything for sale only has the true value that people will pay for it and once the public has determined that it should be free there seems to be no turning back. iTunes started off by charging and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. But Facebook started off as a free social network and if they charge dollar one - look out.
All of these names and ID’s add up to a huge marketing base and yet even with Idol Cds the sell through is less than ten percent. In that case the numbers are still huge. A friend told me the story of his documentary that he had online. It could be viewed for free and bought for $5.99. He had over 60,000 views on Google video and sold 10 to 20 pieces a month for a year. He decided he was losing money from the free views so he cut a trailer that you could view for free. You could download the whole video to stream for $5.99 and buy it for $15.99. His views went to virtually zero and his sales died. Now is he back up with free views and life is good again but there is still no money. What’s a guy to do?
The key is the nexus of traditional sales and old media (i.e. television) and new media. Television despite its current issues in Canada (which I believe will soon be resolved) at least has a model for making money. The selling of tangible widgets has a model for making money. New media gives us all a window to invite the world in to see what we have for sale. But it will never become a portal to sell the people “pet rocks”…to pay for something they believe can be and should be had for free. We need to have a plan from day one of how to attract that audience to ultimately buy something. Idol engages everyone in process but makes no bones about the ultimate goal of selling records by the winner.
Thus we are all involved in the creation of the ultimate consumer item from the show.
It is our CD.
They won’t pay to watch, barely pay to vote (if ever as the text numbers in the U.S. are negligible) but they will buy a CD as souvenir of their participation in the process if not for its quality.
If you are selling – sell - and never forget that that is the ultimate goal…monetization.”
- Zack Werner – Music Industry Expert/Cdn Idol Judge
Tags: American Idol, Canadian Idol, Canadian Idol judge, groundswell, music industry expert, nation, National Speakers Bureau, NSB, participation, pop culture, reality, Zack Werner
January 6, 2010 at 9:08 am |
Thank you for the great post. I really love this tv show. Can’t wait for the next episode ! Keep up the good work with that
May 26, 2009 at 1:50 pm |
[...] as with our previous post on the power of American Idol, it seems the challenge for papers is also to monetize that information or access. With so many [...]