I came across an interesting post on The Blog Beat the other day that discussed what you can learn from Stephen Colbert about marketing and advertising. More specifically, “Colbert taught us that giving out your content for free is not a zero sum game.”
As you may or may not know, Stephen Colbert is the host of The Colbert Report, a satirical news program that you can watch on Comedy Central, the Comedy Network, and CTV. Recently, a series of clips from his television program showed up on YouTube, uploaded by average viewers who wanted to share Colbert’s comedic genius with the rest of world. Stephen himself thought it was a great idea, but his parent company — Comedy Central — did not. Instead, they told YouTube to remove all clips from their website.
According to Comedy Central, sharing these clips for free on YouTube effectively “stole” potential advertising revenue from them. If people were watching The Colbert Report on YouTube, they weren’t watching it on TV, and thus, Comedy Central was missing out. However, the exact reverse was true. People who may not have otherwise known about the show were exposed to Colbert and starting tuning into Comedy Central to catch his half hour of antics.
It was not a zero sum situation, because although Comedy Central was losing advertising income, they were gaining loads of viewers and the net result was more money in their pocket. In this way, it can sometimes be advantageous to give some stuff away for free that could be charged for, because it provides an opportunity for increased exposure and “free” advertising. If you’re a food company, you could sponsor a community event and provide the munchies. If you’re a freelance writer, you can do some pro bono work for a non-profit in exchange for a “thank you” in their newsletter or a link on their website. Giving something away for free could result in more money in your pocket than what you could have earned by charging for that something.
For a more in-depth discussion — particularly about applying this principle to blogging — check out the full article at The Blog Beat.
blogadmin
August 23, 2007 4:02 pm
The idea can be called an open hand approach.
To use a metaphor. If customers were like sand in a giant sandbox imagine if you were try and get as much sand in your hand. What would work better a closed fist or an open hand?
Being closed fist in business is definitely a mistake.
Rick Yuen
August 26, 2007 12:35 pm
Comedy Central made a big mistake in this matter. Viral marketing is a win-win for the content provider so even though it’s “free,” the increased traffic will mean more money for them.
Edward Dowd
August 30, 2007 3:28 pm
Thanks for linking to the article. The Colbert Report lost a lot of its mojo when it was taken off Youtube. They were gaining the attention of the people who would never consider watching the show like me, but now that its been taken off, its fallen out of favor. You can use this to your advantage because if you use some of your content to publish on other websites, you can draw them, just like youtube viewers were draw to Colbert.