A large turnout of representatives from the advertising world, production industry and corporates attended the Reshaping Media conference at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 8 May. The conference focused on how new media technologies are changing traditional marketing and media consumption.
Platypus Productions’ Stanley Edwards, a regular attendee of the MIP television programming markets in Cannes, France, initiated the conference, as a way of imparting information gleamed from the recent MIPTV/Milia market to local players. Himself a producer, Edwards has for many years been involved in the area of branded entertainment.
Said Edwards: “The advent of YouTube, iPods, VOD, mobile TV, among other new media technologies, offers lots of opportunities and challenges for broadcasters and content providers. The industry is changing a lot and very quickly which is why they have two MIP markets a year and why we should attend them. MIP is a global platform for discussion. It’s very significant to note that in the last two to three years, ad agencies have started attending the MIP markets to find necessary alternatives to traditional advertising. MIP is not just about content – you need to see new trends and where to diversify your business. For instance, Google used to be a search engine and is now, with the purchase of YouTube, a content aggregator. Apple used to be a computer and is now the biggest music retailer in the world.
“At MIPTV/Milia the big buzzword was cross-platform content. Technology has created unlimited opportunities on the Internet and you can create a limitless number of channels. New media and viewers are fragmenting which means more niche markets to service. But you need to show value in content so its appeal is meaningful to the consumer. Technology has democratised media and empowered the consumer. As media mogul Rupert Murdoch says, “Going elsewhere for news and entertainment is easier and cheaper than ever before’.’
The conference covered topics such as branded entertainment, advertiser-funded programming, the broadband explosion, Mobile TV and multi-platform media, Mobile advertising, and capturing digital opportunities. Speakers from Saatchi & Saatchi Ogilvy, Gloo Digital Design, M-Net, Curious Pictures, Zoom Advertising, Ericsson and Ernst & Young, among others, gave presentations. See full report in the June issue of Screen Africa.
