The Pre-Roll Experience

We wanted to watch an online video news clip. So we clicked. And we were forced to sit through a Cadillac commercial. Ugh. 

But you know what? we thought. Not this time. We'll move onto some other content on this site and skip the video. So we move our mouse over the bottom of the video to stop the commercial. But there's no way to stop it. There's no pause or stop button.

So we clicked off the site. Not the video. The site. Gone. We'll find that content elsewhere.

This incredibly entertaining (!) anecdote is not simply about a website risking loss of traffic by pushing (a key word here) pre-roll video ads down a visitor's throat. It's about something bigger than that. It's about intentionally creating a negative user experience. It's about ignoring what the Internet is all about.

Yes, we know advertisers will find us online. Everywhere online. But when we click to watch a video, we want to watch the video, not a commercial. But sites (i.e., brands) don't care, as exploding online video ad revenues prove. (Online video is the fastest growing ad format in 2012 with nearly 55% growth—eMarketer, January 2012). Online marketers are putting themselves before the consumer. Again. And it's turning the internet into another interruptive media experience. Simply, that makes it a less positive experience than could be.. 

Deutsch's David Van Praet raises another really good point in a new FastCoCreate piece. Just by using the word "consumer," marketers are making a huge mistake. They're assuming that stimulating consumption should be their goal, instead of improving people's lives. 

Bad idea? Skeptical that helping people can make money? Okay, see "Apple, Cupertino, CA." 

Should consumers be worried about their desired content taking a back seat? We say yes. DIgital- and social-media measurement techniques improve continually, and they provide the rationale for the integrated marketing programs that reach out and touch us—unwelcome as some of those touches might be. So marketers likely will continue to step over the fine line between strategic engagement and advertising overkill. 

But there is hope, saddened,worried "consumer." Some of us remember that it's the person who comes first. Maybe we should all remember to remind each other about that.

Linguistic (In)competence, Social and Otherwise

We've written about how ultra-casual communication through technology has affected our ability to express ourselves. John McWhorter's NYT piece argued that texting and e-mailing are not in fact methods of writing; he calls them "written conversation" and "fingered speech." It's an interesting distinction and one worth exploring because it affects individuals and brands. 

For us here at Positively Writing, McWhorter misses a key issue: the culture of exceedingly casual communication. Because social media affects popular culture in such a massive way, its associated behaviors now exist well beyond its boundaries. Twitter-talk happens over dinner. OMGs become titles of television programs. Texting shortcuts creep into journalism.

Is that a problem?

Well yes, because this underlying culture impacts issues much larger than capitalization and acronyms. It's not about simply messy chatting; it's about messy thinking. And now the people who are paid to report news approach their work the way they approach communication with friends. It's not that  communication with friends is careless but that there is less care taken with friends. 'If I misstate something, no big deal' seems to be the prevailing notion.

We're so disappointed with "the media" because we've seen so much evidence of this—in social media and elsewhere. And this evidence suggests that less care equals less accuracy. 

And that's unacceptable.

Where do you get your news?  A USA Today headline told us baseballer Barry Bonds said Detroit's Miguel Cabrera is "not as good as me." Simply not true (the quote). Bonds said Cabrera doesn't match him in MVP awards or statistics. And he was responsible enough to add the qualifier "yet." 

If a universally acknowledged steroid-user (i.e., cheater) Bonds is more careful with his words than USA Today is, do they deserve your readership? 

In another sports story, almost every prominent media source reported Indiana Pacer head coach Frank Vogel called the Miami Heat (the Pacers' playoff opponent at the time) "just another team." Simply not true. Vogel said his team is "competing for a championship and they (Miami) are just the next team that’s in our way." Even worse, the hometown Miami Herald exacerbated the error by saying Vogel "flip-flopped' when he simply restated his words. . . and they did this after acknowledging he was misquoted. 

These examples raise the question (no, they do not "beg" the question) "Where is accountability?" Well, we think it's in the same place as accuracy: nowhere. As a culture we not only tolerate it, our lack of outrage or action indicates we don't care. So it happens more frequently. So it doesn't jump out at us. So it gets ignored even more frequently. Ugh.

When CNN and the New York Post disgraced themselves with their incomprehensibly irresponsible reporting on the Boston bombings, the social mediascape called them on it. Their response? They didn't apologize, they rationalized. And by giving excuses, they sidestepped accountability.

We freely admit that we here at Positively Writing are sticklers. We cringe when announcers misuse words and newspapers slant their stories with sly wording (we cringe a lot). We can't begin to list the number of times ESPN talking heads mispronounced the names of athletes that may not be considered mainstream (often soccer players). This is their only job—to communicate their subject matter—and they make outrageous mistakes with shocking regularity. We acknowledge we're in the minority and that precise language simply does not matter to most people. But we're appalled that news organizations seem to be leaning in that direction, too, because it doesn't suggest carelessness, but rather incompetence. 

And are we really okay with incompetence. From any quarter? 

We shouldn't be. We've all seen "the power of social media." It can literally create social movements that change societies. So let's create the "Accountability in Media" movement. Let's have a million people rain down their outrage when a newspaper or network blatantly ignores facts or tries to create a story that doesn't exist. If we create real accountability—and affect, say, employment—maybe we'll see a positive change. A change that can only benefit our culture and us. All of us.

Deal?