Cease and desist! The myopia of content blocking

It’s about time for another ‘why don’t the big companies get it?!’ blog. The subject to enflame my social media sensibilities today is the wonderfully cringe-inducing stunt pulled by Sacha Baron Cohen at the recent MTV Awards. The lowdown is the entirely devoid of shame, Cohen, ‘flew’ into the arena dressed as a trouser-deficient angel – in the guise of his alter ego Bruno. He promptly crashed into the ceiling and descended directly in a wonderfully faux-accident to place his crotch on Eminem’s face. The stunt was hilarious and the reaction of Eminem and his crew equally so. Whether they were in on it is beside the point.

The key point is the enormous share-ability of the footage and the fact that the company are doing everything in their power to hinder such sharing. Just try to find the video on the popular sharing sites on the internet. Chances are you’ll bit hit with some red text saying ‘Due to copyright issues you cannot view this video’. Now how many people are going to see that and simply give up? You can bet it’s a large proportion. If your content isn’t where your audience is, don’t expect them to search for too long.

The myopia of large organisations (mentioning no names) still trying to dictate terms to the audience they covert are astounding. OK so the footage was sufficiently gruesome to make it into the newspapers, but what of those that don’t read them. What of those that didn’t see the MTV awards and want to see the video for themselves. Why can’t they? And why can’t they share the video on their blogs or Facebook pages? No, the video can only be seen on a designated MTV page. Hindering the spread of media content is negating a ton of free brand awareness.

The whole ‘build it and they will come’ mantra is fast eroding as those in the Web 2.0 space realise that you can’t dictate where people congregate. If you build something like a social network or a video sharing portal, the chances of it taking off are as slim as they get. People only have so much time to engage in such things so marketers need to get savvy, work out where they are and engage where they are. Forcing everyone to come to your site regardless of what they want is simply reducing the audience by a huge amount.

It’s always good to be constructive at such times as we have been accused of taking an overly negative tone in the past. So, to those lumbering giants that continue to squash any conversation about their brands through heavy handed legal practice and so on, why not ease up? If people want to talk about you it’s a blessing not a curse. Engage with them, give them even more reasons to talk. If they want to share your videos, let them. And if you want them to visit your website, why not offer them something more to play with?

Give it a go – you might like it…

Oh, and by the way, I’m not going to put up a link to the official video.

Comments

[Maurice Cardinal]

what's MTV?

[Paul Rabin]

People in charge of their branding have historically been control freaks. Let's use paid advertising to carefully control and brand our messages. Then let's make sure our spokespeople are thoroughly trained so we know exactly what they'll say if and when the media expresses intereest in them. And let's triple and quadruple check those media lists before we start pitching a story lest we come upon a reporter who might actually ask the difficult questions.

With this level of paranoia, it's no wonder the branding folks are scared to death of message boards running wild with unapproved comments.

[Toby Brown]

Hi Paul, Thanks for the comment. Yes, there is a massive mindset-shift that needs to go on in the world of communications. Eventually all will realise it's simply not possible to 'control' what people say about a company and not always preferential to do so either.