Creating content that can go viral is the holy grail for most marketing companies today, writes Raja Sahi, as he advocates careful consumption of what is being thrown at us in the name of entertainment
Don’t we love to be entertained. What started many thousands of years ago as cave art and guttural sounds around an evening fire has now become much more refined as endless series of content to see on YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and the like. We have a near infinity of books that we can read both digitally and physically. We have so many TV channels to choose from that many of us feel like giving up during the selection process itself. And, if you wanted a quick fix, you can go check out the latest gossip on one of the WhatsApp groups you are in or just go to TikTok, make one choice and then let the application take it from there.
Being 46 and having grown up in New Delhi, entertainment for me, when in my teens, consisted of reading the newspaper in the morning and, after that, mostly of visiting someone’s house and enjoying playing some board or card games there. The days of cable TV, smartphones and the capability to see whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to, was still quite a few years away.
Look around you for a second. If you are affluent enough, and at home, chances are there is a TV, with a remote, nearby somewhere and that you are in possession of at least one smart mobile device. You are therefore just one or two button clicks away from choosing whatever form of entertainment you want, right from the luxury of wherever you are sitting right now.
Democratising Content Creation
We are what we eat and breathe, but we, usually, become what we see. Our brains love learning and we are all sponges when we sit in front of our chosen entertainment medium. Be it a print newspaper or an electronic medium. We enjoy knowing about others and, in turn, we desire to tell others what is happening to us.
Technology has made things much easier. Any one of us, with enough drive, can decide to become an Instagram influencer, a YouTube celebrity or a TikTok personality. No need to purchase an expensive camera rig or procure and learn how to operate a very complex video editing software. Just using a smartphone, you can do whatever you wish.
The near ubiquitousness of mobile devices and the availability of free or really cheap software for the same has allowed for user generated content (UGC) like never before. Furthermore, platforms such as YouTube and TikTok allow for the distribution of such content in a very easy manner. You can even take steps on those, and other, platforms to market the content and make sure that it gets the desired number of eyeballs on it. At one point, people needed to build bridges and buildings to be remembered. Now, all you need is an Instagram account. If you are an author you can publish and print books on demand. If you are an artist you can go to a website like Etsy and, suddenly, the whole world is your oyster.
Effects of Community, Influencers and Marketing
A good word from someone you know goes a long way. Content aggregation platforms know this. Most applications and ecosystems are now designed with recommendation engines in mind. You are told what your friend watched or what someone else experienced so that you can be catalysed into taking a similar decision.
Apps and platforms are designed with liking content in mind so that everyone can be a critic. We are provided with the ability to share our experiences and this data is harvested, accumulated and shown to the crowd in a, supposedly, averaged sense. We, as a part of the crowd, are then influenced by this data that we are shown. Would you not go to a place that had a higher Zomato rating than a lower one? Wouldn’t you rather buy that brand of clothing that the YouTuber you had subscribed to spoke about? Be careful to separate the wheat from the chaff though. You need to have an understanding as to which endorsement was paid for and which was not.
Chances are quite good that the first few entries you see on Zomato or Google are there because someone paid for them to get that top billing. Entertainment and content ecosystems similarly also allow for audience targeting. Advertisers and promoters can choose data sets that include you based on your geography, your marital state, your economic status, your earlier purchasing activity, the list only goes on and on.
Additionally, content is now being created, keyworded and headlined in ways that are engineered to grab our attention. Something gossipy or scandalous is always more likely to get hits. After all, why should one create content that only thousands will see when you can create something else that hundreds of thousands may be interested in so that you can get a higher rating or more ad revenue from the same? Creating content that can go viral is the holy grail for most marketing companies today.
Data Driven Content Creation and Promotion
When Netflix started, they only shipped DVDs that were created by others. Even when they started streaming content, they had no choice but to license the same from other film and TV studios and related production companies. But Netflix understood that, if they wanted to remain masters of their own destiny, then they needed their own catalog of content. Since Netflix had been shipping discs and streaming for a bit of time now, they had access to a lot of data. Data that we consumers had given them. All the shows we saw, that we stopped and never went back to, the genres of content that we consumed more than others, all gave Netflix a lot of valuable information about our behaviour as consumers.
Using this data, they figured out that actor Kevin Spacey and director David Fincher would be a great sellable combination for their viewers. They also realised that a lot of people liked political dramas. Thus, the US episodic version of House of Cards was conceptualised and executed. As the numbers had suggested to them, it was a blockbuster hit for Netflix.
Big data technologies are also being used by platforms like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok in order to promote content that they think we will like. Clearly, it is in their best interest to have us glued to our screens consuming as much content, as is possible, from them. So, they pattern match what we see, what our friends see, what others, as a group see, and then provide recommendations to us. If you have not wanted to leave your screen and, at some point, noticed that what started as a two min viewing session for you, became a two hour marathon, then you can rest in peace with the knowledge that the algorithms and the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models that the programmers have created, are doing their job pretty well.
Yes, we as consumers may be getting what we want, but, there is an ugly side to it too. We are now susceptible to filter bubbles. This is when a platform, in filtering content through to us that they think we will like, only promotes content to our immediate attention that closely matches what we had consumed in the past. In doing this, we have the risk of going into a filter bubble. A bubble where we only see what reinforces what we saw before and hardens what philosophies we may hold. In not being showing a diversity of content, and in us choosing not to search for it, we now have the risk of going deeper into a rabbit hole that we may be in. We become more prone to see only our side of an argument and not see the other side, though the other side may be in exactly the same position as we are.
This becomes an endless feedback loop. The more we see something, the more the platforms show it to us, the more they provide information to the creators that the something we saw is what we want and the more, new, closely matching things are created in turn to feed our demand.
Changing Reality
Of late, newer forms of immersive entertainment experiences like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have started emerging. AR and VR are still in their nascent stages. As these technologies and platforms develop, how will we adapt to them, sociologically speaking? What sort of content will we create for them? Will we look at them simply as ways to augment our current entertainment experiences? Games and simulations that straddle the digital and real worlds, perhaps making a Minecraft building inside your house or looking at yourself virtually trying on a new lipstick when you visit Sephora. Or, will we use these technologies in ways that tangibly benefit us as a whole? Using them one can create 3D digital art and edifices impossible in the real world. We can attend college with friends and go on vacations with family just as they were right next to us. Will we give up the real world as we know it and accept a digitally enhanced version of the same? Or will we be creative and driven enough to make both the real and the digital worlds as beautiful as we can in lockstep?
The Future
Simply put, the future is what we make of it. We, as consumers of all that is presented to us, make active choices, every second of every day. These choices matter. Even if we are not paying attention, the machines are. As are the people that read the reports generated by the machines and take decisions on how to give us more of what we desire.
Yes, we may be knowing, sentient beings. However, we can also be addicts and slaves to our desires. We can choose to consume something just to pass our time. Or we can choose to create something new, something of value. Both of value to us and to others. Something that we create, not just because we desire the celebrity or the money, but because we know that in our creating it and in others viewing it, both parties derive some wholesome benefit from what exists as the end product. Technology should be looked at as a vehicle that we can choose to drive wherever we wish. So please be careful of what you do with that vehicle. There are many paths ahead for our individual and collective journeys that we can choose from. Let us try to head in directions that bring us together, that make us happier, and those that we can look back at proudly many generations later.
The writer is a technologist, entrepreneur, and artist. As the CEO of TSN Group, Inc., he is currently working on a new, safer social networking solution
