Avoiding the ‘crap trap’

Post. Click. Share. Repeat. At a time when filling the digital pipes with ‘content’—no matter the quality—seems to be the go-to strategy for many brands and publishers, looks at whether there’s a reaction against too much information from enlightened mark

AT CANNES this year, Pepsico president Brad Jakeman didn’t lean on euphemisms in a fiery address pointing out exactly what he now expects of his agency partners.

“Instead of five pieces of content a year, a brand like Pepsi needs about 5,000 pieces of content a year,” he said. “Instead of having six months to develop it, we have six hours or six days. And instead of it costing $2 million, it needs to cost $20,000.”

Jakeman’s argument was that in a changed world, agencies were too slow to meet these requirements, and that an over-reliance on skills honed in traditional media meant that they didn’t have the infrastructure to produce sufficient content for the never-ending online conveyor belt.

The old axiom used to be: good, fast or cheap. Choose two. But Jakeman certainly isn’t alone in his desire to have all three. We live in an era where more seems to be demanded for less. And across the industry, we’ve seen this belief manifest in a number of narratives, most often proclaiming the death of this or that traditional media channel in the face of competition from digital alternatives.

Perhaps one of the common digital assassins referenced in such conversations is SVOD. And while it is true that viewers are shifting a segment of their consumption time across to digital streaming services, what they’re watching hasn’t changed all that much. The shows that prove the most popular are typically high budget shows, produced beautifully and featuring the best talent ( Narcos, House of Cards and Game of Thrones all stand as testament to this). The same is true of podcasts, where highly produced, well-edited shows are always the most popular. And, looking back through history, the same is true of almost every creative endeavour, be it writing, painting, music, or film.

The point here is that the distribution models might change, but what people love and dedicate many hours to hasn’t shifted quite as far. And responding to this change by trying to fill the bandwidth with as much as possible is simply going to activate consumers’ dross-filtration instincts.