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We have all, for the last few years, been espousing the obvious fact that we, as communicators, no longer control the message.
We have been gently and not so gently telling our clients the same.
We nod our heads sagely and congratulate ourselves on our ability to grasp the incontrovertible truism that “the audience controls the message.”
Except that sometimes just ‘pushing’ a message out there without considering how and where people might come across that message shows a distinct lack of understanding that you cannot totally ‘let go’ of the message. One of the Three (or Four, depending on who you listen to) ‘Ps’ of Marketing is ‘Positioning’.
Let me explain…
The very kind Ben Hamilton forwarded me a link to a blog run by ‘Worthwhile magazine‘. The author, Martin Flaherty, points out that a trade organisation who decided to try this new ’social media thang’ made a bit of a hash of it. They made a movie and posted it on YouTube.
No, it wasn’t too ’slick and professional’ (often a ‘no no’ for credibility on YouTube). It’s just that the way YouTube places videos into categories that brought this trade organisation unstuck.
Stay with me, it gets funnier…
The trade organisation is one that caters to the vinyl industry, The Vinyl Institute. Are you starting to smile yet?
Yes, The Vinyl Institute had their ‘Vinyl is Marvellous’-ish video sitting in the same category as videos entitled ‘Me In Rubber’, ‘Tight pvc Vinyl’, ‘Vinyl Leather Pants’ and ‘Black & Red Vinyl’. No doubt not the results The Vinyl Institute were expecting.
Yes, the unintended results of using ‘new media’ brought a huge smile of amusement to me and Ben. As Martin says, “is this just an unexpected “learning experience” for those organizations trying to adopt to the rules of the new media?”
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This blogpost created by Bleezer. Ben found it, gave it a try and now I’m trying it while the Zoundry folks figure out what has gone wrong with my installation of Zoundry (still my editor of choice).
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Patrick 10.18.06 at 6:22 am
Companies must be cautious with the distribution of their messages such as through that of YouTube. To express your messages and ideas in the way that your company inteds, the company must have its own method of relaying. For example, a company should have its own website with social media savvy software and have its own YouTube type deal. The message would be in the right spot. There would be no confusion as to what the message meant, etc. There’s my 2 cents worth.
Lee Hopkins 10.25.06 at 10:10 am
Of course, Patrick, the message must be decoded by the final link in the chain - the viewer. So even if a company uses their own website as the distribution point, there is no guarantee that the message they *think* they are communicating is the same message that the viewer constructs. And these days people are more and more likely to take ‘happy family’ and obviously ‘constructed’ images and apply satire and ridicule to them… hence the popularity of satire and humour videos on YouTube.