Dangerous Timelessness
This is me playing a little “Sympathy for the Devil”. In this case, I suppose the Devil would be the Disney Corporation.
As I’m typing this I have YouTube open in another window going through a playlist of old Fats Waller tunes from 1943. Some of you may have been following my Twitter feed where I post the “Song of the Day”. If you go back through them, you’ll notice something: there’s no bias toward any style or era.
There may have been a time where people defined themselves by their specific musical tastes. They only listened to Punk or Classical or Rap. That’s who they were, but in the 90s we started hearing something new: people saying that they listened to everything but “X”. People didn’t bother with a strong preference anymore. As the availability of music increased with portable players and specialty radio stations, all styles became of equal value.
Of course, there’s always something you don’t like, but the same applies to food. Personal taste.
Now, with the Internet’s uncanny ability to make all media from all time equally available, another area of identity has been lost: time. Modern music is what it is, and its in the best interest of record companies and content producers to really push the new stuff, but the idea that new music is somehow better is pretty old-fashioned now.
Now, with the rise of things like Creative Commons licensing and the impossibility of effectively regulating distribution of media online, the availability of our media for future generations will be preserved (whether we like it or not). This massive body of artwork that makes up our cultural heritage is growing every day, and in a real sense we are as connected with 1943 as we are with 1983 or 2003.
For some, this is great. Here’s Lawrence Lessig’s rant on Free Culture, for instance, that prompted the “Free Mickey” campaign:
For others, this is a big problem. A few years ago the Disney Corporation were known for keeping a death-grip on how and when their media is used and distributed. Even today they still dictate to retailers when they are allowed to sell copies of their movies from any era, and actually tell people to take their movies off the shelf when they’ve decided people shouldn’t be able to buy them anymore. If they could keep people from selling copies of Snow White second hand they would, and if it were up to them, they’d buy the rights to every bit of media everywhere and hold those rights forever.
Some have objected to this phenomena. But you know… can you really blame Disney? In the face of a culture that increasingly remains aloof about the new stuff and don’t feel like they should pay much for the old stuff, how is a company whose brand is intimately linked to old classic stories to continue to make a profit?
They did find an answer, and oddly enough it had nothing to do with beating their customers over the head with rights enforcement. All they had to do was encourage a community around their brand.
If you look at what Disney does these days, they focus on personal interaction with their brands. Current virtual world endeavors include:
- Pirates of the Caribbean Online (free to play)
- Club Penguin (purchased for $700 Million)
- Toontown Online (create your own Disney-esque cartoon character)
- Pixie Hollow (expanding the “Tinkerbell” brand)
- …and those are just the virtual worlds. In 2006 they established Disney Cruise Lines, and this won’t be the last “immersive” product they come up with!
Disney is understanding something here that few others are picking up on: the future of branding will be inextricably tied to how well you enable your customers to touch the past. We’re moving into the era of experiencing media, rather than simply absorbing it. Those who provide and capitalize on experiences will survive the information age quite nicely, regardless of how “retro” the audience becomes.
It makes me wonder if we’ll even bother with a term like “retro” in twenty years.
