Public-to-Public Message Conveying

Have you been watching the TV recently? Did the “Look Out For Me” advertisement catch your attention for a split second? For me, it did and I love it. I am not sure how this came about but it’s fantastic to see such an advertisement adopt this tactic again. Enough of statistics, enough of celebrities endorsement or even some gruesome pictures on the cigarettes packaging.

Statutory boards traditionally use death statistics or the scare factor in most of their campaigns. In this instance, the Singapore Traffic Police has a glorious history of those. Remember how we used to see a man being hit and flipped over a speeding car? Does the sight of a puddle of blood beside a toppled motorcycle seemed familiar to you? Maybe, the cracking beerglass similar to that of a shattered windscreen rings a bell? Scary images, all used to send that important message to viewers.

Did any of those truly scare us?

Well, the answer is crisp clear. Not even public disclosure of drink-drivers statistics dipped this fatal habit. No amount of gruesome pictures can make smokers quit if they do not wish to. Therefore, the scare tactic is dead before the viewers are.

What I like about this advertisement is the passive mode of conveying that critical message. Is this an import of social media principles into traditional advertisement? We’re always price consumer interaction above the one-way message dissemination by corporations. No bloodied scene, no dead bodies, no crashed cars. Simply, from members of public to YOU.

True, they’re all actors. But, they’re actors from all ages just like anyone else you see on the roads. I believe this passive approach will be more fruitful because it is just like your friends asking a favour from you. If your friend is seeking your help to look out for him while he changed his flat tyre with his back facing the traffic, would you say no? If your sibling request that you look out for her child while backing your car into the porch, would you reject her? So now, someone’s asking if you could drive safe and look out for him/her, would you turn your back?

One message - many applications. Drink-driving, speeding, beating the red light etc.

June 30, 2008 | Filed Under Advertising, Traditional Media

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What does the AP vs Blogger dispute represent?

It’s a tough question to answer at this point because the stands held by AP and the blogger, Rogers Candenhead, seemed to be conflicting. This is a unique situation despite the fact that a “resolution” had been reached.

I’m interested to see what kind of changes this dispute will bring about. In particular, how can traditional media work with new media to revolutionize the way contents are being shared. Secondly, how will this dispute benefit bloggers and content producers while still experimenting with new media.

1. Copyright and Bloggers Rights
The alleged copyright infringement was the key offensive issue in this dispute. Not only the amount of quoting was taken into consideration, the context of quoting also played a very significant role. A good lesson to learn out of this will be educating bloggers on what copyright is - especially in Singapore. It is not only the “copying” that forms the structure of copyright structure, as commonly believed.

Going by fair usage, a lot of our fame bloggers in Singapore should be totally punishable by copying and pasting news articles in entirety. You are still guilty, even if you had linked to the source. That also brings us to another point, if we are using the same exact headline as the news article, does that constitutes copyright infringement since the headline “belong” to them?

2. Traditional Media & New Media
The relationship is definitely being rewritten now, if you’re not convinced. With Web 2.0 tools widely available, bloggers and social sites are forging new standards for “fast” and “sharp” news. That’s without all the editing that traditional journalists have to go through. How can both work together and safeguard their own interests?

3. New Media users adhering to ethics
New media publishers like bloggers have frequently debated on whether we should adhere to a certain guideline when pumping out stories. The calls for content democracy are loud, but that can also lead to insensitive actions on our parts.

Allow me to cite this example, where an employee was fired when she prematurely released news on Wikipedia of NBC’s host, Tim Russert’s death. NBC was holding back the story to ensure all family members were informed prior to any open public broadcast. Here, we know new media users may not be as “professional” as traditional media veterans.

4. Media Bloggers Association
In US, there is MBA to help defend and mediate on behalf of Rogers Candenhead. Is that what we have here? Will the rest of the world take the cue from MBA’s involvement, and set up official associations to help defend bloggers? It will be a tricky initiative, especially in countries where broadcasters are owned by Governments, in full or in part. Perhaps, MBA is an example why such an association is even needed in the first place.

Is this lack resulting in bloggers being threatened with legal suits? It drew quite a bit of flake from bloggers, and we begin to wonder who can bloggers count on to defend them when media producers and companies are usually backed by corporate lawyers.

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Although this dispute was fundamentally about the infringement of copyright alone, I gathered that a successful campaign “against” the traditional media will bring about the viral challenging of other media owners and corporate companies. AP is now in the process of designing a guideline, to what it says as “permissible usage of its contents”. Will that ultimately “control” and “determine” what bloggers can use and based their references on?

Is there any guarantee that bloggers will not ask for “more”?

June 26, 2008 | Filed Under Blogging, New Media, Traditional Media, Web 2.0

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