Guest: Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Host: John Furrier - PodTech

John Furrier - PodTech
We are here at PodTech.net, this is John Furrier with a podcast with Kevin Townsend, Founder Managing Partner of Science+Fiction. Welcome to the podcast.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Thank you very much.

John Furrier - PodTech
We are here in the office in Menlo Park. You run a firm that has done some pretty cutting-edge work, you've got a huge background like in the digital world, but right now you are just doing a lot of creative and programming development, branded entertainment, creative strategies helping companies and advertisers. Tell us a little about that.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Well the advertising world changed a few years ago dramatically, in that advertisers realized that the traditional medias; print, radio and broadcast commercials, weren't nearly as appropriate for reaching their audiences anymore, especially because their audiences weren't what they thought they were. So, advertisers needing to find their customers, turn to companies like ours that were more conversant in multi-platforming.

John Furrier - PodTech
Explain multi-platforming, because a lots of folks don't know you really well. You have done some work with Lucas Films, George Lucas's work over the years, really pioneering the digital media area; now it's morphing and changing. Talk about that and multi-platforming.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Sure. Well historically, when you talk about digital media, it was all about how you created image for the longest time, from the photo-chemical visual effects days, to the digital and computer based CGI stuff, we did a movie called Jurassic Park when I was at Industrial Light + Magic and that was one of the watershed events for digital filmmaking. But where the digital technology has really taken off is in distribution platforms now. So, not only is it just about seeing a television show or a movie, it's about seeing something online, it's about seeing something in a game, it's about hearing something in a podcast, it's about being able to talk to people across multiple platforms, sometimes simultaneously. And each of those platforms has its own pluses and minuses, and the content needs to be able to reflect that, so the consumer gets the best possible experience. The reason why that's important is because the advertisers are starting to use those individual platforms, to create content as a means of reaching their consumer.

John Furrier - PodTech
So, the digital life of our world now is so digital; you talked about multi-platforming earlier when we were -- before we were recording, about consumer touch points. The only ad model was, get stuff on TV, but now they are going to think differently, multi-platforming really means that if I have cell phone, I got to get some digital entertainment ads, digital content, DVD, I mean it's everywhere. Talk about the impact of that in the clients...

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
What's happened is, technology really has given the power back to the consumer. So consumers now choose where they get their content. If you look at a typical 25-year old North American resident, they can get content on their television, on their computer - four different ways, on their computer, via their cell phone, their PDA, any number of other ways out of home, in home. So, what's happening is, advertisers need to be able to choose the best way to find a consumer and sometimes that's multiple places simultaneously. So, when we talk about multi-platforming, we're talking about giving the consumer the opportunity to choose where they get their message, rather than the advertiser forcing them where to get their message. So the old broadcast model, if you look at television for example; the old broadcast model was, you'd have an act of a show, and you would go to the ad-break, where there would be six commercials that you are forced to watch before you watch the next act of the show. Well now, any of the interactive platforms, and that's everything from anything online, anything DVD based, anything CD based and especially in the television world through the disruptive technologies, 'On Demand' and 'TiVo', that gives that consumer the ability to fast-forward, pause and rewind; and as soon as you can fast-forward television, the ad-break model becomes obsolete.

John Furrier - PodTech
Because they are in charge.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Not only are they in charge, but they are...

John Furrier - PodTech
The users are in charge.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
The users are in charge and they are asserting that arm power.

John Furrier - PodTech
How do advertisers now become in charge because you and I both have similar interests at PodTech and at your company, and we are building this -- our businesses on this idea of a direct business model. So, consumers have choice but sometimes they want to hear it, what companies have to say and they want to interact with known brands. How does a company, an advertiser, a big brand advertiser, how they get in charge?

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Well I think that it's interesting, because advertisers are sort of taking back content; at the advent of television, content was brought to you by advertisers. Texaco brought you show of shows; it was a lux home theatre. And what happened was, advertisers ceded the content creation to producers and to networks in distribution channels and they esconced themselves in the ad-break.

So now they are asserting their power and they are coming back and they are creating content. The good thing about that is, the advertisers know consumers as well, if not better than the networks in the studios. If you talk to a Unilever, if you talk to a Ford, talk to Apple, they know who buys their products better than anybody else out there, because they are constantly looking at who their product is bought by, and what their media habits are. So what they are doing - what advertisers are doing to take back control is, they are creating content that they know their audience wants, and they are associating themselves with it. In the old days they used to call it 'Product Placement'.

A really good example is, if you ever saw ET, ET left -- I mean Elliot left a trail of Reese's Pieces. In Jurassic park, we used 'Ford Explorers' and they drove around in the island and that was a great deal of Ford, you see it all over the place. But the smarter version of product placement now, is understanding that a product can bring content to a consumer; they can selfpublish now. Before, it used to have to go through studio or a network, but now...

John Furrier - PodTech
Direct business model of the internet .That's the platform that's of choice here.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
The gospel of self-publication.

John Furrier - PodTech
So self-publication, this is really putting advertisers in charge, because now they could put up their own propaganda, their literature, their knowledge if you will. But also they are sponsoring programming, so they can put out comedy bits if you will, or just sponsor programming, pay for it.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Well yeah, I mean what's going on with advertisers is, like I said, they know their audience well; so they know what their audience likes and dislikes. And one of our clients is Red Bull, the energy drink; and they know that their target audience really enjoys the action sports world. So we created programming that revolved around athletes and events within the action sports world that we knew that the Red Bull consumer would really gravitate towards. And then, in order to make it as strategically appropriate as possible, we also created it so it could be distributed across multiple platforms simultaneously. So not only can you get it in one format or on one platform, but you can get on multiple platforms at the same time.

So that gives the choice back to the consumer; do I want to watch television, do I want to be online, do I want to watch a DVD? Whatever choice is, that allows Red Bull to having more quality contact with their consumer, it allows the consumer to have a better experience via the brand. And then going back to Red Bull again, it allows that brand to open up more of a dialog with.

John Furrier - PodTech
So, where this really works is that you have the users who are in charge and you got the advertisers who are now in charge; users have very low switching costs, so if they are in charge, they could use their fingers and click their mouse buttons and move somewhere else. So, in a way, it's a nice dynamic; the advertisers know their target audience and they are motivated to reach them. So is this recognizing the digital savvy user, really seems to be the comments read there. Talk about your experiences on that point.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
From a creative -- and first and foremost, Science + Fiction is a creative agency that works to create entertainment; and that's great thing for us, because it used to be, you had to focus on the ad message and the marketing and get all those sell-points in because you had a captive audience. So you had those redundant commercials.

John Furrier - PodTech
You had to pitch, you had to message.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Yeah. It was -- you have to mention the product in the first five seconds, have to repeat it four times, have to have the call to action, it needs to be presented within this framework. Well now the bottom-line is, the consumers vote with their fingers; if they don't like it, if they are not entertained by it, they've so many different options out there that they can go find something else, which forces advertisers, and being an agent of that advertiser on a creative side, forces us to have to put creative first.

John Furrier - PodTech
So, this is so disruptive that in essence what you have that's really changing is, you have the consumer behavior changing -- this which I can just leave -- and you have the advertiser behavior changing. So, really the success model is, align with your audience and provide them with really good quality content and they won't switch. So, the ad is the recognition, and the users then give it back to the advertiser by saying, hey, thank you for allowing me to stay with you.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
There has always been a tacit agreement that, we provide content for you, and if you like it you'll stay. And while you can't ever guarantee that what you can do is just continue to have that open dialog with your consumer; and brands do that through their messaging and through their other PR and Marketing efforts, but predominantly through their messaging, we are able to create content that resonates with a target audience - and that can only benefit a brand.

John Furrier - PodTech
Do you think that big brands are going to create their own media networks? Bud TV is being talked about, New York Times ran a story that Bud.TV will launch on Super Bowl and that they'll probably put a couple of 100 million bucks into building out a network. How does that work?

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Every brand is a distribution channel. When you look at the power of the internet, when you look at the power of the interactive platforms, even if you choose to access VOD via the MSO's -- if we can just throw a couple of acronyms at each other -- if you look at the Video on Demand...

John Furrier - PodTech
From the cable company.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
From the cable companies...

John Furrier - PodTech
Yes.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
...then what you've got is, the ability to self-publish. So Bud.TV can be Bud.TV because they don't need NBC to be Bud.TV.

John Furrier - PodTech
Or a Comcast or any kind of cable channel; the Internet's their channel.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Any brand; any brand can self publish.

John Furrier - PodTech
The internet has unlimited channels.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Right.

John Furrier - PodTech
There's no limit to how many channels can be on the Internet.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
It stops being about who is bringing you indirectly the content - NBC, Paramount Pictures, Warner Music, and it starts being about who understands their brand better; Ford, Unilever, Red Bull.

John Furrier - PodTech
We're here with Kevin Townsend, actually a guru in the new ad models, he's been in the business with George Lucas, his Industrial Light+Magic, which is parent company of Lucas Digital, you are heading up your firm Science + Fiction. Final thought on how this whole world's going to play out over the next five years? What's your view of the future five years out? Shoot the arrow forward. What's going to be different?

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
Advertisers become the new 800 pound Gorilla in the programming world. They've always asserted their power indirectly through what -- where they put ad money in as far as media buys, now they assert it as content creators. So you will see McDonalds, you'll see Ford, you'll see Red Bull, you'll see any number and all of the large advertisers in the world creating their own content and distributing them, either themselves or via your distribution cartels that will allow them to reach and hold large groups of consumers via programming as a means of marketing.

John Furrier - PodTech
Kevin Townsend saying, users are in control, advertisers are in control, distribution cartels -- I love that word. Who will they be? It's the internet right now. And it's great stuff, so thanks so much for the podcast.

Kevin Townsend - Science + Fiction
My pleasure.

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