Content evolves

And so do we. This is a site we're putting together on Squarespace, to give a better impression of our thinking.

Work we admire

Work we admire,
originally uploaded by media_angle.

This is one of those images that captures changing times. It's the Pink Lounge at the G In Galway designed by Philip Treacy, most famous for hat designs. What the G says is luxury is out. Glamour is in.

Our view is that as the world becomes more visual, we'll all be upgrading from luxury to glamour. Luxury is all around us. Glamour is still rare but it will become more common. Philip even designed the door handles at the G in the shape of a woman's back. A hat designer designing door handles?

People in the content business have to learn a new visual language.

Do We Know How Dramatic the Changes Will Be?

A couple of things need figuring out on the road to the new media landscape.

The first is that plenty of companies are gearing up to launch their own TV channels on IP networks, or on the internet. "Brand advertising is definitely changing dramtically, and many brands are launching their own Internet TV channels to reach consumers who are spending more time online and less time watching traditional television," Samatha Stone of Maven Networks wrote to me recently. Maven are at the forefront of those developments.

The second is the nature of content.

As companies begin their lives as content producers in direct contact with their audiences, so their audiences are gaining experience in content production through blogs and video/audio casting.

The previous lives of companies, when advertising agencies organised and designed their communications with the public, revolved around illusion. Blogs and podcasting revolve around honesty and personal testimony.

So a value-shift is needed. But that's not all. The content business is an unforgiving one. Errors, misjudgements, arrogance are all penalised by audiences that will happily turn elsewhere. This is the trick that corporate TV channels have to pull off: engage honestly, engage on a personal level, be error free or admit errors quickly, and avoid arrogance. Misjudgements on the other hand seem inevitable and will need to be explained in public.

Companies that go into internet TV or IP TV will have to become content experts and will have to account for their decisions to the public they succeed in attracting. It's a very different future.