Earning Your Media (continued)

I delivered the keynote talk this morning at the Ad Age Digital conference and I have to say that the feedback you all gave me on the first draft was super helpful and made the talk so much better. I changed up the presentation a bit, but the delivery (which I always do live without notes) was vastly improved because I had our conversation about the first draft resident in memory.

Here's the final version of the presentation. I used slideshare's youtube embed feature to get the two videos into the sliedshare presentation. I was unable to show these videos live this morning because I built the deck on mac Powerpoint and used mpeg4s and the windows version of Powerpoint they were using at the conference didn't like them. Oh well. I think the videos are fun and make the presentation livelier and better. As usual, please let me know what you think.

#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. johndodds

    Nicely done. The one thing that isn’t explicit in the deck (and maybe wasn’t relevant to your point) is just how difficult it is to achieve the sort of traction that the successful examples have done. And how earned media is about to become even harder to earn. Those of us who already buy into your main thrust are going to have to give the “how” an awful lot of thought.Look forward to watching the video – assuming you were filmed.

    1. fredwilson

      I don’t know if they filmed it. I hope so. Then there will be an audio track

      1. Doug Kersten

        I am really looking forward to hearing it. I can determine your general idea by looking at the slides but there are nuances that you always miss when just reading slides. Especially interested in what you said when going over the last three slides.

      2. Mark Essel

        I could really use the secret ingredient (the sound track). Of course thanks for sharing, lots to learn for an outsider.

  2. karllong

    very informative presentation all round. I’m really digging the concept of earned media vs paid media, that is a very useful distinction in my mind.

  3. Felipe De Lucio

    slide No. 15 says it all

  4. Dedric

    Hi Fred, great presentation. Had a quick question on slides 15 and 16. Just curious where the data is coming from for the graphs.Otherwise, great read. Definitely a topic that is more and more on the minds of clients (I work for an agency).

    1. fredwilson

      Slide 15 is an email from the CEO of OddcastSlide 16 is the whopper sacrifice slideIf you mean 17 & 18, that was done in concert with this community and you can read the comments on my first draft to see the discussion about it

  5. abutlerbro

    The media is like the mafia. You pay them, they pay attention. The alternative, you create attention and then they offer you a major discount – free ninety nine. As one of your slides aptly points out it takes more time to create attention generally which has a cost associated with it. The game changers – innovation and being a change agent for good. These stories tend to cut through more and reduce time costs. Still they need a compelling telling. Certainly a bad time to be selling the SOS because as your slide also points out you end up spending a comparable amount for the same amount of impressions. So a interesting discussion for me is, which businesses can benefit most from this new equation and why?

  6. Facebook User

    Perhaps a business idea for the fine folks at AdAge: charge a small but meaningful sum to the throngs unable to attend the conference for the audio and/or video that accompanies these slides. I’d pony up and doubt I’m alone in that.

    1. fredwilson

      This is the future of a lot of live stuff

    2. Ken Ripley

      You’re so right. At $1,000 per conference, plus travel, the cost is too prohibitive. The value of networking at these events is reason enough for people to attend, but for those who want the information and learning, paying a fee for the AV is a no-brainer…and the event organizers have an additional revenue stream.

  7. Ethan Bauley

    Generalization du jour: “ad agencies” have the money, but pr agencies have the DNA.Or: “Earning” media is completely antithetical to a media agency’s business model; if they create awareness, they want to get paid for it every step of the way.That business model doesn’t scale…for clients.

    1. fredwilson

      Then we need new agencies

      1. markslater

        no we don’t they already exist – we just inserted in to our professional endorsement contracts for footballers in the UK that it is mandatory that they Tweet. We will even provide them with assistance to get up and running. we then ask (not insist) that they talk about the boots. These are premiership players – its not unreasonable for them to have a social exhaust of 5-10k followers. we can quickly and cheaply have our product made aware to hundreds of thousands of potential buyers.It would not surprise me if athletes (not to self don’t tell the agents) start inserting their exhaust in to their contractual requirements (look i have 200,000 followers – that is worth $$$$$) – the twitter agency model.last year we paid massive sums to a PR agency. Not making that mistake this year.Fred – i have finally found a use for twitter 😉

        1. Ethan Bauley

          Great stuff, but I want to make one very important point, which is a corollary to my original comment:It doesn’t matter where the ideas & execution come from: PR, media agency, independent consultant, employee, partner, etc. Any of these existing agents have the resources necessary to succeed. It just matters if the strategy is good and the execution is tight.The issue that I see most often is that one or more players in a given “marketing 2.0” initiative have no meaningful framework to evaluate whether a given strategy or tactic is good or bad (e.g. they have no idea what a simple network effect is).Which leads me to my final point, which is: education is the new business model.

          1. abutlerbro

            Ethan, I agree with your “education is the new biz model” assertion. Just has to be consumable and meaningful. Often one of those ingredients is missing. Which goes back to your point about strategy. The problem is not everyone knows how to execute everything or anything for that matter. Digital makes it possible but that does nothing to make it good. We see this a lot with clients who have in house departments that just churn out the brand damaging work. Just terrible, no filter. We try to insert ourselves as collaborative creative directors. It has proven to be challenging to fill the gap.

          2. Ethan Bauley

            The trick is “scalable learning”http://blogs.harvardbusines…

          3. markslater

            So i have 27 hours on a plane to come up with a document that helps me to familiarize our organization with the whole notion of our brand and social media. And the single biggest challenge i have had is the learning curve. i can explain a shaq twitter example and they get that, but have no strategic understanding of how these and other examples are part of a bigger shift of the entire marketing landscape – a nexus that we as a smaller brand competing with monsters should run, not walk to exploit.any suggestions?

          4. fredwilson

            If you are in LA, take them out for Korean tacosIf not, you can download my slide deck and use whatever you want from itI don’t have a CC license on it, but everything I do is re-usable and free to distribute as widely as possible

          5. markslater

            i already did that! – your deck led me to darmano.typepad.com and he led me on to others……i will share it back when i have it complete.Loving slideshare right now…

          6. Ethan Bauley

            Read umair haque’s pieces from feb 2008 called “the shrinking advantage of brands”, that’s a good framework

          7. brooksjordan

            Since I have it up, here’s a great use of Twitter that obviously has the strategic and tactical woven in it:http://lefsetz.com/wordpres

          8. brooksjordan

            Mark, I have this strong urge to put together a reading list for you that combines big picture and examples.Or maybe, even better, we need to come up with a group reading list on avc.com?

          9. markslater

            just checked out that letter – very interesting.i am all for it if you have more suggestionsbeen a long time reader of Haque too.

        2. fredwilson

          Yay!

  8. MattCope

    Great deck – it’s a shame those videos didn’t cooperate at the keynote.I’m disappointed these presentations don’t come with audio. Would have enjoyed your commentary on this, as well as your presentation to TV execs a while back.

    1. fredwilson

      I need to buy a small audio recorder and turn it on when I give these talks

      1. Doug Kersten

        Edirol makes an excellent, portable MP3 recorder: http://www.edirol.com/index…A lot of the more professional podcasters I know use them.

      2. Morgan Warstler

        I agree. I think it’d be great to have you layer in the audio.

  9. Mike Gero

    Fred:Were there any interesting questions asked? Any of your points challenged? How was the general reception?

    1. fredwilson

      Yes, pete blackshaw asked several really tough questions which he also asked on twitter during the talkhttp://twitter.com/pblackshaw

  10. Paul Higgins

    Good stuff FredHave posted it on our tumblelog and forwarded it to a guy I know who has been given responsibility around new media in a newspaper business.CheersPaul

  11. Jeff

    This doesn’t detract at all from the great content, but since I saw it – there’s a typo in your second to last slide – should be 2013, not 2103. Thanks for sharing your presentation!

    1. fredwilson

      ShitThat is not easily fixed since I wiped out the spreadsheet that I used to create that chart

  12. dennis miller

    terrific piece fred , helpful with our video distribution businesses which continue to blur the line between marketing/content.

  13. mdraz

    Fred,I was at the conference and saw your presentation. It was great. One thing I found surprising though was the audience’s reaction to the notion of “earned media.” It was as if the majority attending had never encountered that concept before. Is it possible as marketers they’ve lived and breathed “paid media” exclusively in their careers so far? True, it was a largely ad-centric group by definition, and it was an Ad Age conference. In contrast, my career has its roots in earned media, though things balanced out between earned, paid and owned over the years. Still, for me, the audience reaction just reinforced the timeliness and importance of your insights. Glad you presented what, how and when you did. I look forward to seeing more at some point. Now, if only Ad Age would post the audio somewhere soon! Great presentation,Michael

    1. fredwilson

      Thanks Michael. I was worried that I was telling people things they already know

      1. mdraz

        Hah…Very droll, Fred!

  14. Michael

    fred, don’t you think part of this is also predicated on user intent? that is, do you see an increase in services that allow more user control (think: Mint)?

    1. fredwilson

      Yes, absolutely, although I prefer wesabe over mint 🙂

  15. leeschneider

    Fred, I know this isn’t 100% on topic here, but saw a great example of free/earned media/advertising. A wonderful local restaurant here in Boston, b.good (@b_good_), was mentioned yesterday on Twitter by @biz touting their veggie burgers (their regular burgers and chicken sandwiches are great too). What’s better than having a great product and getting it announced to 350k plus followers! b.good has been using Twitter to promote their business around here, but the mention from @biz certainly does the trick a lot quicker.

    1. fredwilson

      I love that. Seems like there’s an oppty for @b_good to somehow enhance biz’ tweet with a link of their own or something