Media Link-ed: Fit for a King - Michael Kassan - MediaBizBloggers

What is content? Besides being "king," I mean. Isn't it time for a serious re-examination of what we are putting on all of those proliferating platforms? Merely pointing out that sometimes it's user-generated now doesn't seem all that helpful.

Just what is content in this chaotic, digital media age? Shouldn't technology serve the creation and distribution of content rather than be an end unto itself? And—here's where my lawyer training kicks in—the natural follow-up, "what should we do with it?"

These questions gnawed at me as I prepared to moderate a panel at the Variety Entertainment and Technology Summit in Los Angeles this week. Because, like you, I can give dozens, or scores, of definitions of "content," with all sorts of nuance. But we're looking for quality here, not quantity.

So, since I like to share my media angst with friends, family, and colleagues, I decided to ping Media Link senior partner Karl Spangenberg, who holds an undergraduate degree in English from Yale and was an English teacher before he became a marketing maven, to see how he might handle this hot chestnut. True to his background, Karl used a really old world example: Shakespeare.

Karl said we should think of content the way Prince Hamlet thought of it—in his case, a play—not just as something to fill in space but as an active agent to achieve our goals. "The play's the thing," said the young prince (and Karl), "Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."

Hamlet wanted to ferret out the truth from Claudius. For us, the goal is to communicate ideas and evoke emotions to achieve certain effects and accomplish specific communications goals. To do that, Karl and I agreed, we first must define what "content" is not in a digital eco-system—it is not a verb like "Twitter," "Friending" or "texting." When people use Twitter, Facebook, Google, AIM, or text, they are engaging in "active verb" experiences that are enabled by technology platforms and resonate with lots of people who are creating, sharing, commenting, reading, viewing, or listening to "content."

Therefore, "content" qualifies as a person, place, or thing, i.e. a noun, and not to be confused with the technology itself. The real substance of our craft is content that moves and persuades, not the bells and whistles of instant polling, blogging and UGC. They are enabling actions supported by new technology—but the play's the thing.

And that, of course, begs the follow-up "what should we do with it?" To achieve our goals in the aforementioned chaotic, digital media age, "content" can only be defined as material that is artfully and authentically constructed; that is grounded in rich ideas; and that moves us on a human level.

The dark side of today's technology is that anyone can create and distribute any kind of "content" quickly, affordably, and virally. No story ever needs to go untold, and that's fine for Friending, but we need to set a higher standard of communication for our commercials, branded entertainment, webisodes, mobisodes, scripted dramas, reality series, animated shorts, movies, and even Hamlet's favorite platform, plays.

Already, many of us in the media communities have been seduced by the Siren song of technology to do cool things just because we can. That's merely self-indulgence. Content that can catch the conscience of the King, however—in our case, consumers—will produce royal rewards. Otherwise we'll be filling the channels with story-telling so lame and unpersuasive that it fulfills Macbeth's disgusted definition of life: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

And that is really not helpful.

Michael E. Kassan is Chairman and CEO of Media Link, LLC, a leading Los Angeles and New York City-based advisory and business development firm that provides critical counsel and direction on issues of marketing, advertising, media, entertainment and digital technology. Michael can be reached at michael@medialinkllc.com

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