Shaw Capital Management Scam Info: Royal Scam: Why Media’s Excessive Royal Wedding Coverage Is Appalling And Wrong

Watching the wall-to-wall royal wedding coverage on the network morning shows and cable news networks this morning, it is easy to forget that every one of them is supposedly run by a “news” division. Wall-to-wall is not figurative term but a literal one. Give the people what they want right?

But wait, a recent poll by the New York Timesand CBS found that about 28% of Americans were following the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton “very closely” or “somewhat closely,” a number that eclipses even the rosiest estimates of NASCAR fandom. Now, imagine if every NASCAR race of the past 20 years happened on the same day.

Yes, it has become fashionable to bash the saturation coverage of the royal wedding, but the the problem isn’t with the amount of coverage, or even the expense, but with what it costs us. This spectacle illustrates the degree to which profit-driven “giving the people what they want” has undercut journalism’s true purpose.

There have been a great number of people who have openly admonished the news media for royal wedding “circus act.” In fact, the only subject more hackneyed than royal wedding commentary on Twitter of late, is people complaining about the royal wedding commentary. These hipper-than-thou critiques ignore the fact that the royal wedding is a rare “real-life” vestige of a myth that runs deep in our culture. Quick, name a Disney movie that didn’t have a princess or a prince in it.

There was a time, though, when you could have a gloriously decadent royal wedding cake, and eat it, too, by having a news media that devoted adequate resources to fulfilling its public service obligation. But times have changed, and so too have the apparent strategy of network news. Former ObserverEIC Kyle Pope summed it up best on a recent tweet, writing “The big TV networks show their true stripes, investing hugely in royal wedding coverage while letting their foreign bureaus die.”

Yes, by any measure, the decision makers at both network and cable news divisions went long on the royal wedding, spending millions of dollars of the very budget that they constantly carp about being so diminished. And remember lay-offs of the last year? Think of the poor news producer who was recently let go due to a lack of funds, who must be thinking “I was fired for this?!”

The thinking behind the news director’s decisions is crystal clear; British royalty (particularly with regards to Princess Diana) was big media business in “the Colonies,” and so the thinking is that we will collectively be very interested in the next Princess. Given the difference in the times, and the public hits that the Monarchy has taken in the interim, it’s doubtful that Kate Middleton will ever get to Princess Di status. In much the same way, we are unlikely to enjoy an omnipresent news media with resources in every corner of the world.

Of course, there were only three (real) channels back then, and only sixteen or so programming hours to fill. E! was just another letter in the alphabet, Bravo was just something you hollered at the opera, and MTV was just a jukebox with pictures. You didn’t have to do much more than point your camera at the happy couple to be guaranteed a huge audience. Nowadays, the fierceness of the competition is manifested in amped-up graphics, increasingly tangential guest “experts,” and a crowding-out of…everything else. Especially — and rather sadly — real news coverage.

But its not just the news media, the media watchdogs are largely complicit. Even the thoughtful Poynter Institute collected Twitter reactions from a various media critics, and nary one was actually critical of the coverage, nor questioned the gross amount of overkill involved.

The recent Tornado disaster in the Southern part of the country perfectly illustrates the stark disconnect between NY based news staffers and, well, the rest of the country. Over 300 people have died as a result of this catastrophe, but the cable news networks have all reported more on the royal wedding than the tornadoes in the South, judging by a topic search on TV Eyes. Don’t worry though, real-time reports on the devastation in the South could still be found…by civilians on the ground uploading videos and reports via YouTube and Twitter. Is it any wonder that so many Americans so deeply distrust the American media?

One can cynically presume that many in the news business saw a trip to London (vis-à-vis the royal wedding) as a classic media boondoggle. And while its too soon to know the ratings and how this investment has paid off, the coverage does feel a little shoved down our collective throats right now. With apologies to Steely Dan, it all feels a lot like the royal scam.

Shaw Capital Management Factoring: Eventbrite Looks at Why and When We Share

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2011/03/eventbrite-looks-at-why-and-when-we-share.html
BY CYNTHIA BORIS ON MARCH 17, 2011
Last year, Eventbrite took a stab at putting a dollar figure on the worth of Facebook and Twitter followers. Now, five months later,they’re digging a little deeper into the data to discover why and when we share.
To begin with, let’s look at the data from October of 2010. Eventbrite sells tickets online and what they’re measuring is social ecommerce through the use of “Dollars Per Share” (DPS). Back in 2010, they found that a share on Facebook generated an average of $2.53 in sales, Twitter was $0.43 and Linkedin was $0.90. Factoring in email sharing, they figured that their average DPS for all social media combined was $1.78. Not bad for a campaign that only costs you the man-hours.

When and Why We Share

Eventbrite offers “like” buttons on event pages and “Publish to Facebook” buttons on the ticket purchase confirmation pages. They found that 40% of people chose to share an event prior to buying a ticket and 60% chose to share after. The thought here is that once people have committed to going to an event they’re more likely to share it. But let’s look at that 40%. Why are they sharing an event they may never attend? Could be they’re helpful souls who like to spread the word even if they can’t go for financial or time reasons. Could be they’re testing the waters. I might go if a bunch of my friends agree that it’s a good idea. What would be interesting is to know how many of the pre-share people ended up buying tickets anyway.
Now here’s the kicker. Eventbrite found that a “post-purchase share on Facebook drives 20% more ticket sales per share than a pre-purchase one.”
Think about this behavior in terms of your business. Do you offer customers a chance to share their experience with friends after the sale? I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed or had any interest in this kind of option but it makes sense. I’m a big DVD buyer so I wouldn’t mind telling all my followers that I just bought Barnaby Jones: The Complete First Season if all I had to do was hit a “like” button.
Let’s take that a step further. As an Amazon affiliate, it would be even better if I could hit that like button and automatically have my affiliate link posted to my wall or my Twitter feed. I’d do that in a heartbeat.

The Social in Social Media

Eventbrite says that Facebook had about four times the amount of sharing compared to Twitter. Much of this they attribute to the fact that there are simply more people actively using Facebook. They also make the point that Facebook sharing more closely resembles everyday human conversation as compared to sharing on Twitter.
That last point is a big one and one that isn’t properly appreciated by many marketers. With social media marketing, the keyword is social. To get the most out of your efforts there needs to be a conversation going on between you, your customer and your customers friends. Posting to Facebook is not like putting up a billboard on the freeway. It’s about presenting your followers with posts that inspire them to action, be that sharing with a like button, buying a product or leaving a comment. Of course, that’s not as easy as it sounds. If it were, we’d all be getting rich off of our Facebook fan pages.
Do you offer customers the option of easily sharing their purchase with friends? And how do you go about keeping the social in social media?