Back Seat Marketers

I watched Disney’s latest tween movie made for TV (with the kids): Camp Rock. OK, standard fair as far as made for TV movies go, but I have to say that Disney seems to be figuring out an updated model for successful media management.

Beyond Scarcity Marketing with events such as Hannah Montana, Disney is showing that it can also step up to the freshness and frequency needed to stave off the problems of Tivo and its time shifting short attention spans. High School Musical may well run into a 4th, 5th and 6th edition and the expansion of other creative properties on its network are creating many more reasons to watch early and regularly to keep up with the story lines.

Who else is figuring this model out? Trent Reznor of NIN. Didn’t think I could fit together Disney and NIN in one post, eh? Well, Trent has pushed no less than three albums in this year with free content, some pay for content and tons of interactivity with his audience.

Creative frequency is the new grand slam pop chart topper, and interactive is the new means to monetize by leveraging scarcity from a limited venue of both time and place.

At a time when some shows are tempted to lower costs by doing less weeks per year and less minutes per show, the new successful model in media is likely to be more content, more frequently and more interactive. As Umair would say, it is either in the networks’ DNA or it isn’t. I’m long on Revision3 for just that reason.