Media Service - Knowledge Pool of Art

Allrighty, the previous media service idea that I had is dead and gone. I heard that there are going multiple startups already in Helsinki that are planning a similar event application. Actually I heard that a friend of mine is developing an idea that is somewhat like the one that I introduced for the panel. It’s time for new brainstorming, time for new ideas.

Lately I’ve been working with an idea of a service that would bring artists together. A place where one could seek for help and eventually help each other.

The technology makes it possible that a piece of art does not have to be made in one place only. For example multitrack-recording allows a musician to record one piece of a song and send the file for someone else who will record another track on top of the previous one. More and more amateur musicians own recording equipment that allows some simple, but still high quality recording.

In this knowledge pool the user could search for artist that would help with his or her project. Let’s say that the band in Finland has its demo composed, but for recording they would need a cellist. On the webpage the band would search for musicians who could play cello. All the cellists in the service would have uploaded a portfolio of their past work. By listening and reading through the portfolio, the band would send enquiries whether the cellists would be willing to help. After an acceptance of co-operation, after some hours on Skype and so on, the band would have a track recorded with a nice cello solo that would give chills.

After the band has a track recorded, they need cover art to release a demo. They will take a picture of themselves and search for someone who would be able to photoshop it. In the pool, there would actually be plenty of skillful painters who could paint or draw the cover art instead of using a crappy picture in the booklet just like everyone else does.

As companies are getting sick and tired of paying tons of money for their creative content, the service would also be a place for them to meet amateur artists, who are able to do almost equally, sometimes even better, work than the professionals. When a company needs a poster for their campaign, they would open a project, wait for the applications and choose the artist who would be most fitting for it. And again, the same thing with an advertisement video. The company would seek for people to compose the music or create the sounds for that. When the service would be used for commercial use, the artist would of course be rewarded, but also the service provider would take its share.

The service would be beneficial for many. The amateur artists would be glad to find new projects to work on and to spend some of their enthusiasm for their hobby. The companies would get quality work done way cheaper than they would if they ordered the same stuff from some professional studio.

Benchmarking is still under progress. There are plenty of services out there that are helping the musician to get the music published. It seems though that not too many of those services are good on connecting the artists and bringing them together. I would come up with a benchmarking later this weekend.

Reaction Paper: Moisander & Valtonen, "Qualitative Marketing Research - Cultural Approach" chapter #1: The Cultural Turn in Marketing Research

In the opening chapter of their book ’Cultural Approach to Markets and Methods’ Moisander and Valtonen explain the term ‘cultural turn’. They write that there has occurred an increased interest in studying marketplace phenomena from new cultural and postmodern perspectives. This shift in academic marketing research is called ‘cultural turn’. It is suggested that the cognitive goal of the new aspect of market research is to gain a better understanding of the cultural contingency and complexity of marketplace. The key element in this understanding is by studying the marketer and consumer at the same time rather than considering them as autonomous subject. Both of them are active producers of the cultural world by creating cultural content, such as meanings, norms and values.

The acknowledging of the cultural turn can be seen in the number of academic submissions published in the last decade. Cultural aspect is taken in consideration more and it has earned its own journals and other discussion forums. The specific journals for the phenomena are needed as alternative approaches in marketing research were previously seen only as ‘interpretive’ research. These approaches do use more qualitative research methods than conventionally market researchers have been used to. It is important to have emphasis on the discipline of the new perspective also in the actual marketing research. Academic knowledge and disciplines have a connection to people’s everyday life and they construct the social reality. When done in the marketing research, acknowledging the cultural turn helps to gain an understanding about the cultural complexity which is caused by increasingly multicultural market environments.

The authors define a framework in which the core marketing constructs should be comprehended further in the book. The method used when defining is is rather interesting As much as defining the ways in what culture, products and brands, consumers and marketers should be seen, Moisander and Valtonen are giving examples on how they should not be seen. To get support for their definition, the authors rely partly on the definitions by other academics. The interpretations that are ruled out seem to be always from contemporary scholars or the anonymous authors of management literature. In this framework culture is seen as a fluctuating environment that includes the cultural discourses, but also the everyday cultural practices through which meanings and other artifacts are produced. Marketers are defined as 'cultural intermediaries that produce and circulate symbolic forms, goods and services'. Consumers as wished to be seen as active players who constantly re-work the meaning that they consume. Products and brands are representating the cultural resources that are created and produced during the processes of representation.

There are a couple of interesting points that keep repeating in the text. First of all, the marketing environment is fluctuating by its nature. The ways in which culture occurs, such as meanings and norms, are reproduced, contested and negotiated constantly. Second, these meanings and norms are results of the co-operation between the core marketing constructs.  Consumers and marketers rely heavily on each other by using products and brands as carriers of meanings. This is why they cannot be handled in a stand-alone sense. Third, by understanding each other marketers and consumers can reflect their own role in the market. Common understanding is one of the key elements in the discipline of cultural turn in marketing research. Especially the marketers might have lack of understanding when having problems to co-operate with the modern, active and powerful consumer. However, it has to be admitted that marketers are probably still the most powerful gatekeepers and decides eventually what is supplied and offered to consumers in the market. Nevertheless, without consumers the products and brands would only be ‘features and benefits’, but eventually the customers give them a deeper meaning.

It is interesting to see what kind of consequences the cultural turn in marketing research has in real life practices. Obviously the discipline has been acknowledged on the academic level, but it may be assumed that reaching the market researchers themselves with the new ways of thinking is still in progress. Lately there has been a strong tide towards discussion over more qualitative and interpretative methods of doing business in general. However, it occurs that when it comes to the moment to act, the new perspectives are already forgotten. Nevertheless, when learning to exploit the doctrines that Moisander and Valtonen have introduced about the cultural turn in market researching, the reward will be waiting. The multidimensional relationship and understanding between the customer and the marketer that could be reached has too big of a potential to be left without notice.

Reaction Paper: Robert V. Kozinets, "E-Tribalized Marketing?: The Strategic Implications of Virtual COmmunities of Consumption"

Robert V. Kozinets’ article, “E-tribalized Marketing? The strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption” (1999), deals with virtual communities of consumption from marketing perspective. The article broadens the concept of consumer behavior and tribalized marketing by discussing the dilemma from online perspective. By the time the article was published the virtual communities were just about to get formed. It is interesting that already by then one could have seen that the traditional ways of segmentation and targeting didn’t fit all that well to the new, fluctuating environment. From the ground of his own fieldwork Kozinets writes about Virtual Communal Marketing that would fill the weaknesses of the conventional marketing models such as database marketing. Virtual Communal Marketing is based on the following assumptions: online consumers are not passive, rather active creators of consumption information, the communication between customer and customer is rather multinodal than binodal and that the communities will provide multidimensional data in addition to the one-dimensional sales data and demographics that the marketers are previously used to exploit.

A justification for the article could be found for example when the author mentions that in the end of year 2000 there would have been 40 million members in virtual communities. Over a decade has passed by and the number of the participants in online groups today can only be speculated. The rise has been exponential and is still going strong. However, it seems as the marketers haven’t been apt to follow the process as fast as it has occurred. Only during the past couple of years one could have been able to notice the results of e-tribalized marketing in every day surfing. The potential is out there, but the marketers need to define their conventional processes all over again. That is where Kozinets’ article still comes in handy.

By identifying the players in the virtual communities the author comes up with strategic implications that would help targeting desirable virtual communities and their members more effectively. The strategies, that give the article its frames, are interaction-based segmentation, fragmentation-based segmentation, opting communities, paying-for-attention, and building networks by giving things away. 

The whole Kozinets’ e-tribalized marketing thinking is based on the four different types of members in the virtual communities. The author states that the identities of the members are defined by the relationship that the person has with the consumption activity and by the intensity of the social relationship to the other members in the group. These two factors form axis that define the four member types: tourists, minglers, devotees and insiders. Kozinets uses the types of member as a ground to construct the strategic implications. By knowing the identities of the members, it is easier to identify what the members are doing, in what kind of fragmented virtual communities and so on.

The most interesting part in the article was when realizing the major differences 

that the online consumers have compared to the offline consumers. It feels like the online customer is an upgraded version of the customer that a marketer has been previously used to. It is active and powerful, rapid in its movements. Each difference causes a significant change to the way the customer must be reached by the marketer. Rather than learning this fact it was an eye-opening experience just to realize it. Marketing student could describe easily the characteristics of an online consumer, but it is harder to realize all of the possible ways that it effects the marketing itself. The active, content creating and organized customer, just to mention a few of the diverging characteristics, is something that the marketer needs to stay on toes with. The shifted power from the marketer to the consumer has caused a remarkable change when creating a common relationship. Not only does the marketer need to be gentle with an individual customer but the whole community.

It is impossible to be without thinking of the date the article was published. Back in 1999 the whole online environment that the article is based on was quite different. Social interaction in the Internet was just about to be found by the consumers. Frankly, the virtual communities in the end of the previous millennium were not comparable to the state of social interaction on web nowadays. Probably no one could even predict by then the measures that the virtual communities would obtain in the next decade. It would be interesting to know what Kozinets’ meant when predicting the consequences as “the consumers get active online”. Have we reached that level already, and if we have, by how much? For example he writes about virtual communities that would self-segment themselves by fragmenting into smaller and smaller divisions as more and more active users would participate in the interaction. Kozinets’ writes about potentiality in self-segmented groups from marketer’s perspective already 11 years ago. Somehow it feels like the development of exploiting potential is still in progress. It seems that millions of virtual community participants is just not enough. For example the fans of Liverpool FC are still the object for Manchester United jersey offers. Once again the potential was maybe overestimated in the short time frame, but who knows what happens in the long run.

As participating in virtual communities has increased exponentially since the journal was published, it is playful to think how an article about e-tribalized marketing would look in the year 2010. The newsgroups like alt.coffee are dead and gone, but instead it would be interesting to read the updated version of the exploiting the situation that occurs nowadays.

One thing that Kozinets seems to be extremely excited about is that online communities provide a wealth of cultural information. It feels like the author is amused by the huge potential of the information that the marketers are able to gather from the virtual community members. In addition this consumer research information is out there for free. It is said that by using this multidimensional and qualitative is said that by multidimensionality and qualitative touch it fulfills the lacks of data that traditionally is collected from the demographics and sales data. Author’s enthusiasm to the subject obviously bloomed after finishing the subject of e-tribalized marketing as a couple of years later he published an article about a market research tool called ‘nethnography’.  It is significant and interesting that the member types in virtual communities that he introduced in the journal article in hand in 1999 form a strong base for the theory of nethnography.