Alan Moore's Communities Dominate Brands is emerging as a really excellent blog on the way that content, community, connectivity and commerce are superseding old fashioned brands, bringing the on-demand model into the marketing environment. Lean communication, if you will.
He and Tomi Ahonen spotted a great example of this phenomon at The Long Tail.
Here is their suggestion:
So who needs a network?
Here’s what "Arrested Development" and its producers should do once they are are free of the network shackles and retake ownership:
1). Offer the show online and on VOD every week for free
2). Make it a free video podcast
3). Seed Bittorrent with it.
4). Set up a site that has all the shows right there, along with shorter-form content, ready to watch or download in all formats
5). Have the cast blog - in character. Have them do video blogs and even live webcasts in character, too
6). After each show, have viewers comment and then address their comments. Invite the best commenters to have a guest spot on the show
7). Heck - invite fans to shoot their own fan-fic shows. Celebrate “AD” as the first open-source sitcom
8). Web contests: “GET ARRESTED”! “George Bluth is hiding somewhere on the web. Clues are available both online and at geocaching locations. Find him, and you’ll be on a show - and not just in a cameo role - as the man who caught George!”
9). Find a title sponsor, but for just enough money to make a dent in your budget.
Then comes the money:
“Arrested Development” is already a proven, strong DVD seller. Put out DVDs with all the extra content you’ve created on the web. Don’t wait until after the season is done: put out a month’s worth of shows every four weeks on one DVD.
After four weeks, the video podcast version will cost 99 cents. The VOD version will be 49 cents after the initial month, for the rest of the year. After that, older episodes will be just a quarter.
Invite premium membership on your site for unlimited archival access and free podcast downloads, in addition to direct access via chats with stars. Auction walk-on parts on eBay
It will be a phenomenal success. There is one warning, however: “Arrested Development” will make so much money that the networks will try to woo it back. Under no circumstances should the show make that mistake
Comments