Monday News: Sony’s future, focus groups and creativity, copyright v. revenge porn, and a provocative South African ad
Sony to axe 5,000 jobs and sell Vaio unit – One more story on Sony, this one on the company’s plans to stop manufacturing its VAIO PC and to cut its “global workforce” by 5,000 jobs over the next year. With anticipated losses of more than $1 billion for the year, despite robust sales of their PlayStation 4, the company is clearly facing a pressing need to re-prioritize and re-structure in an increasingly competitive marketplace:
Japan Industrial Partners, which specialises in turnarounds and buyouts in manufacturing, said it aimed to reach an agreement by the end of March to buy the PC business.
A small player in the global PC business, Sony has often been criticised for having too much under its wing.
If the PC deal comes together, a new company will be established, both sides said.
Sony said it would concentrate on its line-up of smartphones and tablets and “cease planning, design and development of PC products”. –Aljazeera America
F**K FOCUS GROUPS! – why I think focus groups will kill creativity in TV – This is really a must-read article for anyone engaged in a creative industry. Anderson talks about how focus groups are used in developing new television series, and how, by their very nature, they push shows toward “mediocrity,” aka appeal to some kind of “average” of viewer tastes. That is, when you are attempting to appeal to the most people possible, you make multiple compromises away from what the show’s creator initially intended. The inability to distill down to what makes something brilliant is the enduring quality of creative genius, Anderson argues, pointing to the failure of studies that try to identify the classic status of music by the likes of Beethoven and Mozart.
The author further points out that when the Doctor Who update was focus grouped in 2005, it showed dismally, even though it has become a huge success since. When we talk about fostering an environment of creative risk and introducing novelty in the Romance genre, I think Anderson provides some crucial food for thought:
It takes time for new products to be adopted by the public. It generally takes a small passionate group of “sneezers” (people who get excited about something new and start telling everyone they possibly can) to get behind a new product and make it a success. This is down to familiarity and status quo bias amongst the general public – we don’t tend to like “new” and “different” things when they first appear – but once people begin getting excited this initial resistance can soon be broken down. The problem is that a focus group will only enforce these biases. How can genuinely new and exciting products ever reach the market when faced with these hurdles? –Jamie Anderson’s blog
Our Best Weapon Against Revenge Porn: Copyright Law? – A while ago I linked to a couple of articles on revenge porn, aka the practice of posting intimate photos and video online, often by bitter exes, most often by men against women. Although these incidents are (rightly) talked about as a form of harassment, it has been very difficult for victims to have sites shut down and posts removed, in part because of the safe harbor provisions of section 230 of the CDA (Communications Decency Act), which protects ISPs and other provider services from being held liable for third-party content (eBay and Amazon have been sued multiple times for allegedly objectionable reviews).
I have to admit that I have been very frustrated with attempts to have the safe harbor provision eliminated, precisely because of the speech-chilling possibilities; at the same time, though, I agree that victims of revenge porn need an easier legal route to justice. Enter the DMCA, which protects copyright of selfie photographs, so many of which are later used in the execution of revenge porn schemes:
Many of the lawsuits against revenge porn websites are for tort claims like stalking, harassment or invasion of privacy. The problem is that most stalking and harassment laws are not applicable to revenge porn submitters because there is no repeated course of conduct or direct communication with the victim.
. . .
More than 80 percent of revenge porn photos are selfies, meaning that, as the “authors” of their selfies, the majority of victims own the copyright in their photos. Victims can use the takedown provisions Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to de-index websites with their photos from search engines like Google and ask the websites themselves to remove the photos, all without having to hire a lawyer–The Atlantic
New Bell’s South Africa TV Ad — The Reader – Although this video is for whisky (Bells is a blended scotch whisky), and be sure to read the comments for a discussion of the appropriateness and implications of that, it’s pretty moving. Africa in general is struggling to foster a reading culture, and countries like South Africa are dealing with literacy issues, on both the childhood and adult level. And while I suspect this ad will sell its fair share of whisky, I can’t find it in myself to object to a video that so poignantly promotes the importance of reading, not only for basic literacy, but for national literatures, as well. –YouTube
The South African ad is wonderful. Thx for sharing.
I don’t care what that was advertising, it was beautiful.
Several years ago, I had a Vaio. It was the most beautiful computer I’d ever owned and I loved it, but they were always expensive for what they were. So I’m a bit sad but not all that surprised that Sony are giving up on them.
Focus Groups – I used to run them and analyse them as part of a market research manager job. They always tend to the mediocre, because the accepted wisdom is to discount the outliers as representing an insignificant part of the population. The technique is excellent when you’re trying to develop something like frozen peas or yogurt, because it provides information that will move the most product.
With media, the approach should be radically different. Have the producers learned nothing from the success of HBO? They gained their foothold by making quality, expensive, difficult dramas. And “Game of Thrones” fits right into that.
It revolutionized American TV drama. It’s sad to think we won’t get any more of that, if they take the “fmcg” approach to focus groups.
copyright as a tool to help stamp out revenge porn? Why not, if it works? After all, it wasn’t the rackateering that got Al Capone, it was the tax evasion!
Oh my god, that video! I’m literally in tears. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Add me to those who loved the video.
That video is wonderful. Thanks for sharing.
I don’t entirely disagree with the premise that focus groups inhibit risk-taking and innovation (although that’s not always true). But to blame focus groups is to mistake the symptom for the cause. Executives in all kinds of fields want sure things; very few businesses reward failure unless you’re a CEO with a golden parachute. If you take away focus groups, they’ll find some other way to try and ensure the next winner. There are plenty of copycat shows on TV that weren’t dreamed up via focus-group testing. In other words, the reward system for the final decision maker shapes the incentives in the earlier parts of the decision chain.
I don’t know what Bell’s costs in South Africa, but in the UK Bell’s is definitely a medium-priced (at best), working person’s whisky. So it’s kind of fitting in that way too. Great ad.
*Sigh* My current and last three laptops have been Sony Vaios. I love the model, and have always found it to be the best of the best for keyboard and screen. I think my next laptop will move me over to the Mac side.
Georgina Henry died on Feb 7…..
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/07/georgina-henry
Adored the video. I just wanted to point out that the man learning to read was reading HARD COPY. That warmed my heart more. He was learning how to read and finally reading the OLD SCHOOL way. With all these industries shuting down their e-reader divisions and the whole DRM debacle, maybe it’s time to really re-consider going paperback again. Even though my books are e-pubs, my publisher is slowly putting out its inventory in print now.
The link wouldn’t load for me, but I think the term Anderson is looking for is early adopters and/or opinion leaders. Research shows that innovators and early adopters aren’t just ahead of the curve, sometimes there’s actually a lull between the point they adopt and the point where the rest of the market starts to do so, and you can’t always predict how long it will last – or if the rest of the market really will follow.
Maybe the solution is to do targeted focus groups with early adopters and opinion leaders in addition to the usual sampling. Actually, I imagine some companies already do just that.
@Sunita:
Executives in all kinds of fields want sure things; very few businesses reward failure unless you’re a CEO with a golden parachute. If you take away focus groups, they’ll find some other way to try and ensure the next winner.
I don’t think Anderson would disagree with you. But I also don’t think he’s failing to see that point, or ‘mistaking the symptom for the cause,’, but rather taking on focus groups because he’s specifically interested in the line between creative collaboration and creating for the purpose of broadest consumption:
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting for a minute that collaboration and creative input from multiple parties isn’t important feature of the creative process. Far from it in fact – I’d say it’s essential. If you’re a creative and you don’t have anyone around you to call you out on your bullshit, then you are in trouble. But there’s a huge difference between creative collaboration and the creatively sterilising effect of trying to please everyone who might see your creation.
This very much reminded me of the discussion we’ve been having these last few weeks on DA about how reader feedback, for example, often stands in for “the reader.” It’s not precisely the same thing, but I think the same line, so to speak, is being traced.
@mel burns: Thanks for posting that link.
@Rose: I couldn’t load the article on my phone, for some reason, but it’s fine on my laptop.
Re. sneezers and early adopters, sneezers is a term Seth Godin popularized in relation to his “ideavirus.” They’re the ones who spread the virus. He uses the term separately from early adopters. There’s a brief description of sneezers here: http://www.authorems.com/2012/sneezers/
@P. J. Dean:
I’d like you to check your able privilege here. Paper books are fine and good for those who can read them, but many disabled people cannot, and reading electronically is not a lesser experience or exercise. Ebooks allow many people to read who can’t read paper books: dyslexic readers, blind readers and physically disabled readers. They’re an important part of a literate society.
@Robin/Janet:
Re. sneezers and early adopters, sneezers is a term Seth Godin popularized in relation to his “ideavirus.” They’re the ones who spread the virus. He uses the term separately from early adopters.
That sounds like a variation on the concept of opinion leaders to me… and I think opinion leaders is the more appealing term ;) I’m not familiar enough with Seth Godin’s work to have an opinion about its merits, but it’s well-established that word of mouth is a powerful force and that firms want what they’re selling to generate positive word of mouth. Achieving this isn’t so easy, of course.
I loved, loved, loved the video, it made me cry.
I knew nothing about Georgina Henry until I followed the link–how sad! Thank you for sharing that, Mel Burns,
What a beautiful, poignant ad! I loved it. Thanks so much for sharing!
Re: the Vaio. I owned one years ago and loved it. I’m sorry to hear that Sony has given up on them.
My first PC so many years ago was a Viao. And my current laptop is a Viao. It will hopefully last me a long time.
Add me to the list of those who loved the video. I like that it wasn’t just books he was reading, but comics, cereal boxes, etc.
Just had to chime in on the focus group discussion. I find it frustrating whenever I read about an industry ‘expert’ justifying continuing with a tried and true formula because ‘that’s what our customers want’. No, that just means you are selling the same old product to the same customers. They don’t seem to grasp the fact that plenty of people don’t buy the product just because it is the same old, same old. It’s the whole idea of untapped markets remaining untapped because no one is will to take a risk and find out what ‘different’ people are looking for.
Oh, and I love the video too. Excellent stuff. Just what I needed after walking into the middle of a confrontation in our grocery store’s parking lot in which one woman threatened to shoot another over a parking space this afternoon. While I was trying to get my six year old son in his booster seat. Whew!
Oh my goodness, that video! It’s wonderful and so moving. Thanks for sharing!