Fear of the Man

The first official article I found on how large media companies are openly scared of the implications of user-generated content. "It puts a lot of pressure..." onto the companies. Really? Well companies especially like Fox have been able to do whatever they wanted for a while. It's seems like the media-dinosaurs comet has finally hit the earth. We are living in interesting times (haven't we always?) and I am feeling that the time for huge top-down structures is over due to the inherent flexibility that communication enabled networks are offering. Add to that the value that digital content is representing and voila, Revolution like noone could have imagined(have we ever?).

"Bermel (Mary Bermel, interactive director for Hewlett-Packard) admitted she was "scared to death" of the prospect, while Trimble (John Trimble, SVP of branded sales for Fox Interactive) and Koerner (Stacey Lynn Koerner, president of consumer experience practice for Interpublic) were ambivalent.

User-generated content brings "huge additional pressure," Bermel said. "We want our brand in the marketplace presented in a certain way. Our advertising teams are used to push marketing--now we're asking them to create pull marketing, things that will attract people to our brand."

She also decried that "We say the new metric is engagement, but when people ask what that is, we can't really tell them."

Trimble said there was a "major paradigm shift" underway..." - more -

via Unmediated.org